


A Certain Tenderness

by Gilded_Pleasure



Series: Osteogenesis [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: ADDITIONAL WARNINGS for some chapters, Ancient Eldritch Cosmic Judge Loves Snails and Wearing Lace-Trimmed Socks, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Artist Papyrus, Big Plot!, Bowling Alley Fight, Chekhov's Glass Cannon, Culture Shock, Emotional Sex, Everyone Is Gay, Extreme Temporal Discomfort, Family Feels, Fluffersmutter N Angst Sanswich, Frisk has so many Problems, Healing Cuddles, Holy Shit here come JOKES, It's my kink, Non-Traditional Families, Other, Papyrus is so kind & clever he's just Like That, Past Child Abuse, Reader is Nonbinary, Relationship Negotiation, Sad Hot Dog Sans, Sans has Sexual Hangups, Sensitive bones, Several Recognizable Sex Acts, Shameless Gay Gremlins In Love, Slice of Life & Death, Soft Postapocalyptic Slice of Life, Soul Sex, Soul Trauma, Time Fuckery, Undertale Saves and Resets, Upsettio's Final Form: Regrettio's, Worldbuilding, [sans's theme song intensifies], advanced monsterfucking techniques for thoughtful adults, and has cPTSD, beep beep motherfucker we're going to Grillby's, chronically ill reader, continuum mechanics, how to meet sad single skeledads in your area, i hope u like 10k+ word sex scenes, i write intimacy like it's my kink, if you don't love me at my sensitive exploration of trauma, mathemagical, now you're boning with continuum mechanics, science sans, this is turning into the Soul Sex Kama Sutra, watch me earn that E in Hardmode, you can fuck the science!, you don't deserve me at my knock knock joke fisting scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2019-09-14 12:40:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 76
Words: 491,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16913070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gilded_Pleasure/pseuds/Gilded_Pleasure
Summary: Eleven years after the fall of the Barrier, you’re a genderqueer staff member at Ebott University, the first Monster-Human hybrid college on the surface. You love your work, but chronic illness saps your energy, and the start of your second year living in Ebott finds you more than a little lonely.Then Frisk Dreamurr and their skeletal relative walk into your office.You've never met anyone like Sans, and there's something about this disheveled, smart-ass skeleton that makes you feel like you're gonna have a good time.Too bad all three of you die horribly before he gets a chance to show you one....What?...That didn't happen?You might not know anything about souls, but you better get some answers fast before yours finishes tearing itself apart.[themes of trauma and recovery; detailed descriptions of memory loss, unreality and confusion.additional warnings for some chapters.]





	1. alkynes of trouble

[New Order - Regret](https://youtu.be/71ZHVmSuBJM)

You pull your jangling keys out of the door with a long-suffering sigh, flexing your fingers gingerly as you realize the office is already unlocked. Leaning against the heavy door, which you probably shouldn’t have strained yourself wrestling open and just used the button like a smart person, you take a deep swig of the coffee in your green metallic travel mug.

The lights are on and everything, and you didn’t even notice. You accept that your brain is cancelled until the rest of the coffee is gone.

“Hey, Diane,” you try to say as your pass her office, but the fact that your coffee is more than half milk in an attempt to spare the lining of your stomach turns the words into a mucus-y sound like you’re breaking into an impromptu death metal cover. You clear your throat and try again, but Diane is already replying.

“Good morning,” the woman who’s technically your boss but acts more like a partner replies, tapping a thick sheaf of stuffed manila folders on her desk inside her office. She’s saying more, but it’s not getting through. You stop, rocking back on your heels a moment, and stare at her mouth until she repeats herself.

“Pop in here once you get set up. We’ve got a Personage coming in this morning to get coordinated.”

You can practically see the capital ‘p’.

You stand there for an uncomfortably extended moment, holding your mug in front of you stiffly and blinking at her, waiting for the information to process. Your bags dangle heavily from your shoulders, and it’s making your joints ache. Being groggy gives you a tendency to get stuck like this. Luckily, Diane is accustomed to your eccentricities by now and just goes on with organizing her desk while she waits for you to finish absorbing what she’s said. After a time, you raise your coffee to your mouth again, then abruptly walk down the hall to your own office, unlock it, and sit down to scroll your phone during the serious business of further caffienating yourself.

The barrier separating monsterkind from humanity had fallen a little over ten years ago, while you were still in college. After years of struggling with accommodations for your disabilities and the outright hostility of so many professors and staff, you’d made an adjustment in your career plan and ended up working in higher ed disability services after gaining your degree, instead of the more traditional academic track you’d had planned. It felt like you were on the right side, especially after years of being around professors who acted like students were the enemy. You weren’t the one who started the fight, but you wanted to make sure you were on the right side if everyone else decided to make it into one.

When you’d first heard about the new hybrid academic institution being founded in Ebott with the combined efforts and funds of both humans and monsters, you’d been one of the very first to send in an application. You’d stressed your own experiences with hostility, alienation, and resistance, as well as your track record in coordinating services across disciplines at the college you’d been working at for the years previous. Your hopes that it might provide some insight for anyone looking askance at the extra years it’d taken you to get your degrees were rewarded, and you’d been willing to move here for the opportunity to shape an entirely new field of education.

This is the beginning of your second year working at Ebott University, the first academic institution to integrate magical education into its curriculum from its inception, and you’re the assistant director of the Adaptive Services Coordination department. Second fiddle is just fine with you, since you’re more than happy to do most of the organizing, decision-making, and delegating work tucked safe on your office. Diane, the director, can have all the dinners and speeches; you’re much happier working directly (and tirelessly) with the students and their families to find the programs, professors, mentors, and adaptive technology that work for their individual styles and abilities.

The best part of it all is that every student who attends the university has to meet with a coordinator here before attending classes or programs. It’s the first place you’ve worked where the students don’t come in with at least a slight edge of resignation tainting their enthusiasm, and you ascribe that to the reduction of stigma that usually surrounds asking for and seeking accommodations. It can’t be “special treatment” if _everyone_ receives it, after all. In fact, tailoring every student’s approach helps the slowly evolving shape of the curricula here to become more and more accessible for any type of person who might decide that college is the right choice for them. It’s all taken into account, and it’s not even a quarter as difficult as people in traditional human colleges like to pretend it is.

No other position has ever afforded you so much leeway in assigning novel solutions to problems that shouldn’t even _be_ problems in the first place, and the pay is honestly higher than you’d expected. It feels good to not be struggling for what’s possibly the first time in your life, but you have to admit it can take a lot out of you. You wish you’d had more time to make friends and engage your own self-directed activities since you’d moved to Ebott, the town around the mountain where the monsters had first emerged and then settled, before spreading out across the continent over time. In a lot of ways, you still feel like you just got here, and many of the activities and places where people tend to socialize and make connections aren’t always accessible for you. And sometimes, you just plain don’t have the physical or emotional energy outside of work.

Although you consider this your dream job, it had been hard to leave your family and friends to come here, especially your younger sister, her husband, and their children. Despite the age difference (you’re older by a good handful of years), you don’t have the same kind of rivalries or resentments between you that many siblings carry into adulthood. More than that, especially after your mother’s passing, you consider her your best friend.

Eventually, the puffy feeling around your eyes clears up (mostly thanks to the NSAIDs you have for breakfast; you say a silent apology to your stomach for the third time today), and you’re feeling a little more prepared to have a conversation like a human person.

In the meantime you grab one of the bags you’ve brought with you to work and head to the restroom. You open the door to the single-stall that’s your default choice for workday personal care, not that gendered restrooms are even a thing at Ebott. You consider yourself grateful for a lot of the changes that the monsters have brought with them even in one short decade; after all, a lot of the human ways of differentiating and categorizing don’t even apply to at least half of monsterkind. You smirk trying to imagine someone trying to assign a gender to the Moldbygg that worked in the bursar’s office. You’re pretty sure they don’t even have a _name_ , technically, but some nerd in the office had started calling them “Chell” for some reason and it had mostly stuck. If nothing else, monsters were forcing humans to get much more comfortable with ambiguity in general.

After you take care of your more pressing business (probably too much coffee but oh well), you pull the toothbrush and toothpaste out of your bag and run the tap, spending several minutes brushing away the unpleasant aftertaste of yes-definitely-too-much-coffee as you consider what the morning’s appointments might have in store for you.

Although the monsters had definitely had a baby boom soon after coming to the surface, at least once the military “quarantine” period was over (as ineffective and silly as the whole thing had been in the end; turned out the monsters had mostly just been being polite about it), none of those children were college-age yet. Although built and intended as a hybrid institution, the vast majority of the students were still human. Most of the monster children were still attending Toriel’s school for their educational needs, one of the first organized institutions monsters had founded after emerging.

The queen of the monsters was an imposing figure, or at least so you’d gathered from the footage and photos you’d seen of her over the years. Diane had met her in person quite a few times, mostly in her function as director of this department. The last board meeting had actually involved preparing for an influx of monster students in the near future as those boom babies grew up and got interested in possibly continuing their educations. Diane had given you the notes from the meeting later, which you appreciated. Just because you have a hard time sitting through a lot of those functions and the attendant social interactions doesn’t mean you’re not interested in shaping the direction the college will be heading as it evolves, and it’s a relief to be somewhere that can accommodate in spirit as well as on paper.

You knock cursorily on Diane’s office doorjamb, then come in and get yourself seated as she turns her swivel chair around.

“So, anyhow. Important meeting for you today.” She hands you a thick folder and when you open it, you blink in surprise at the name on the top.

“Oh,” you murmur softly. “I didn’t realize...I guess they _would_ be about that age now, wouldn’t they?”

You frown a moment, considering. “But, are you sure _you_ shouldn’t be the one handling all this? I mean, I don’t really stand on ceremony, and you already know Toriel, and I’m not very… is she going to be coming here with them?”

Diane smiles as you remember to pause and let her answer the questions you’ve already asked.

“They didn’t really say, so I’m not sure. Frisk might just be coming by themself. After all, the Ambassador’s nineteen now, and perfectly capable of making themselves understood. Especially here,” Diane smiles, remembering to finger-spell the names, numbers, and pronouns for clarity, as well as signing a few other words for emphasis.

You glance down at the file again, noticing something.

“So, they primarily use ASL, then. Some hearing, though.”

“Well,” Diane shrugs. “You know how it is with that. If they’d notice a bomb going off right next to them they get marked as _some hearing_. You’re more fluent than I am, and I think it’s better if you handle most of the nuts and bolts. You’re a lot better at working with the students longterm, and I don’t hesitate to admit it. I’m just too impatient. I can schmooze the crap out of parents and dignitaries, though, so I’ll save my patience for that.”

You snort, considering how often she’d embarrassed you at first by singing your praises to others in your presence. At this point, however, you consider her a friend and have gotten more used to her, just as she’s become accustomed to you. It’s a huge relief to just be able to be yourself at work, instead of feeling like your skin’s on too tight under other people’s unkind scrutinies. Being around monsters, who were all so different not only from humans but also each other, had eased a lot of mental baggage you hadn’t even realized you’d been carrying around. Everyone’s individuality makes it hard to feel like “the weirdo” in a place like Ebott. You might be a little lonely, but you feel less alienated here than anywhere else you’ve ever been.

You continue to peruse the transcripts in front of you. A combination of homeschooling with testing and research projects through Toriel’s school, for the most part. Although you know Frisk is human, the transcripts read a lot more like those of the monster students you’ve worked with to coordinate curricula to suit. Traditionally, higher ed for monsters was a lot more like mentorships or apprenticeships; again human institutions had had to learn to adapt to less cut and dried categorizations. Monsters didn’t really have degrees, just those who were willing to swear to their expertise, or documented time spent working alongside experts. Although you aren’t an academic advisor per se, you often function as one for the students whose files end up on your desk. Your skillset is less about static knowledge, and more knowing exactly how to find out what you and your students might need, or who to ask. It’s one of the few areas you’re surprisingly flexible.

“Mmm. I think you’re right, Diane. I should probably handle this, since I’m not seeing any sort of declaration as to what kind of program or major they might be interested in. And it’s honestly better to accommodate to ‘no hearing’ just to be on the safe side-if they don’t speak verbally it just makes sense anyways. The communication aspects should flow smoothly, though I’m fine lipreading.”

You and Diane share a look, and you’re reminded of how relieved you were that she’d been familiar with auditory processing disorders before you’d come to work here. Some people have a hard time wrapping their heads around the idea of someone being able to hear sometimes, or under certain circumstances; much less the concept of being able to hear, but not understand. Yet another thing that didn’t have to be a problem for you, but so many seem to take it as their personal mission to turn it into one.

***

Frisk Dreamurr, human ambassador of the monsters and one of the more symbolically important people on Earth, is surprisingly charismatic considering they are one of the most ambiguous human beings you’ve ever met. Their heavy and warm-looking sweater, although oversized, looks handmade in the most positive sense of the term. The forest green yarn certainly suits their nut-brown complexion. They have thick, blunt-cut dark hair and long, narrow eyes that glitter with cheer and humor.

The person standing beside them is a few inches shorter than Frisk, and rather _un_ ambiguously a skeleton. You assumed already that anyone accompanying the Ambassador was very likely to be a monster, but you’ve never seen a monster that looked like a skeleton before. Then again, you’re sure there’re plenty of things in life you’ve never seen before, and someone else’s appearance isn’t really the sort of thing that’s going to trip you up. His face is rather broad and somehow smoother than a human skull, and the deep grooves that curve outward from the inner corners of his eyes remind you of a tearstained cat. The way his eye sockets almost seem to be half closed only adds to the effect.

Frisk’s clothing is casual but neat; in contrast, their companion looks like he just rolled out of bed in a battered hoodie, basketball shorts despite the chill temperatures, and what you’re pretty sure are the most broken-in pair of house slippers you’ve ever seen. Lace-trimmed ankle socks peep shyly from the backs, which you imagine help keep them from sliding off the bare bones of his feet. Far from being being offputting, his sleepy appearance and attitude just makes you feel comfortable. Although the thought does attach itself to another one- wishing you yourself were home in bed yourself rather than meeting two new people and working all day, but in truth you only feel a passing regret. It’s time to do what you do best.

Frisk’s eyes take in your own carefully ambiguous appearance, and although you’re not always great at gauging these things, a moment of silent commiseration seems to be shared between you as you introduce yourself and welcome them.

“I’m Frisk,” they introduce themselves enthusiastically. “Good to meet you. This is,” they hold up their fist and carefully spell it out to avoid misunderstandings, “ _Sans_.”

You notice that tiny white lights or points float expressively in the otherwise impossibly dark eye sockets of Frisk’s companion; they glitter with what looks like amusement. You turn toward the grinning skull (he does seem to be grinning, it’s not just his face) and nod carefully, but his surprisingly deep voice attempts to clarify before you have a chance to speak.

“sans the skeleton,” he rumbles. Then he says something else, but it seems as though one of the junior members of the staff is running off what sounds like a thousand copies of her dungeons and dragons character sheets again. You belatedly remember it’s Monday, that she always hosts her group on that evening, and everyone knows she’ll be coopting the printer for at least an hour before lunch. The noise of the machine seems to blend with the resonant, almost musical tone of his voice, and you realize you can’t separate the two sounds at all, really. It’s just one long, throaty stutter.

_Uh oh._

Out of habit, you stare at his mouth to try and find a thread of the conversation you can extrapolate from, but come to the realization rather quickly that there’s no help for you there. A voice is certainly emerging from that fixed grin, but the sound isn’t being produced in any way you’d be able to follow visually. Rather than forming arches in his upper jaw, the tops of his teeth are covered by some kind of ridge that tempers his expressions, but doesn’t move the way lips do. It doesn’t even seem like his teeth part at all when he speaks. And...he’s not signing. Why isn’t he signing?

You glance toward Frisk in confusion, but they seem to be following whatever Sans is saying well enough; they huff a laugh through their nose as their eyes narrow shut in amusement. Does Frisk have more hearing than you’d assumed? Well, you have to admit, you can almost _feel_ the vibration of Sans’ voice as well as hear it, maybe it’s in the right range for Frisk to catch the sound. Either that, or maybe Frisk can read...teeth?

You do your best to keep your face neutral, but it feels tight with anxiety. You hadn’t anticipated this kind of issue, and you’re not very good at coping with an unexpected impediment in the middle of an already-stressful social interaction. They glance at you, seeming deflated, so the neutral expression is apparently not working. Rather than trying to guess what sort of response might have been called for, you take a deep breath and smile gently.

“Why don’t we uh, talk in my office?”

They both nod, and you walk them down the hall toward your room in the department, then gesture both of them past you through the door. Even flustered as you are, you notice Sans’ interesting personal fragrance; a scent not unlike human hair, but drier and more pleasant-reminds you of something nostalgic you can’t quite place. Frisk just smells like any nineteen year old; crayons and lemons. You shut the door behind you, finally closing out the incessant interference from the copier, and invite them to take any seat they like. Sans is still commenting quietly, and Frisk huffs their quiet laugh again. You really wish you could understand what he’s saying, but even without the enormous printer whirring and chuffing in your peripheral hearing, you can’t make sense of it. It’s almost as if his voice is made of multiple complex tones, somehow.

Both of them choose the dumpy but comfy mauve love seat you furnished your office with instead of the hard plastic chairs that seem to spawn of themselves throughout the entire administrative building your department is housed in. You’re not surprised; it’s much more comfortable for humans and monsters of all sizes and shapes. You still keep the chairs around for times when you’re inundated with bigger family groups or support staff, but the couch is your favorite fixture. It also doubles as a napping space on your bad days.

You take your own ergonomic office seat with a half-suppressed sigh; it was mostly anticipatory, you realize. Either you’re having a good day, or the medication’s working like it’s supposed to for a change.

“Okay,” you say, more comfortable ensconced here in your own carefully curated space. “I’m going to be working with you to help choose what kind of classes you might be interested in taking, and to develop both a schedule and a curriculum that will suit your individual learning style,” you begin, warming up now that you have the opportunity to get down to business.

“Every student who wants to attend here has to come to this office first, since we’re still developing a standard methodology for delivering education that’s accessible for anyone, but I personally don’t think that should ever really happen. A _standard_ _methodology_ , I mean,” you clarify, then stop yourself before you end up waxing philosophical on pedagogy for the next half hour. That’s not what your current meeting’s for, although you have already half-forgotten that the kid in front of you is some kind of important person, and are already mentally running down a list of text and image based software that could be implemented to replace any audio-based extant learning materials. Not that there are a ton of those, anyway; blind and low-vision students in general have the disadvantage there all too often. But you’re getting ahead of yourself.

“Um, anyway, do you know what kind of program or discipline you’re the most interested in here at Ebott?” You glance up from the papers you’re pushing around on your desk, lists of class descriptions and basic summaries of programs. “You don’t have everything or anything decided yet, just give me a general idea of your preferences.”

Frisk is nodding. “Monster sciences,” they sign firmly. “And,” they hesitate, glancing at Sans. “Social sciences, maybe.”

“really?” the skeleton replies with a smirk. His facial expressions are surprisingly easy for you to read, you’re not really sure why. “you sure you-” and you don’t quite follow what he said, again? It doesn’t sound anything like the kind of thing you’d anticipate someone might say in this situation, which just makes the whole thing more confusing.

Oh, no. This is turning into a Situation. He’s still not signing.

Frisk makes a moue of distaste and shakes their head.

All you can pick out of Sans’ response to that is something that sounds like “organic chemistry”, and “trouble.” You’re not sure exactly what your face looks like, but it must not be good because when they both glance at you for a reaction, they immediately look concerned.

“Why aren’t you signing?” you blurt loudly, sounding a little panicked. Oops. Now you’re overreacting. You belatedly realize that you’re the one that turned this into a Situation; after all, there’s been nothing stopping you from explaining the difficulty to both of them, rather than trying to put your head down and barrel through the interaction like nothing is wrong. Bad habits die hardest. You take a deep, bracing breath.

“I’m sorry, I uh, didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just, I saw in Frisk’s file they primarily use ASL, and I...have some hearing difficulties myself. That’s part of why I’m handling this meeting, and...” You trail off, and flick your eyes at Sans apologetically.

“I’ve barely understood a word you’ve said since you got here. Sorry.”

His teeth are parted a little (so, his mouth does open? Not much, maybe), and you turn to Frisk. “Would you mind terribly, uh, translating for your...friend?”

Now Sans just looks embarrassed, and Frisk bursts into laughter at what appears to be Sans’ expense.

“You just wasted all your best material!” they sign, waving fingers almost in the skeleton’s nonplussed face. “Now you can you please stop acting like you’re doing me a favor and just admit you wanted to come?”

Sans pushes the eager teenager’s hands out of his face, but does it with a fond smile and chuckles wryly. They share a look for a moment, then Frisk shakes their head at him subtly but firmly. “Not without asking,” you think they say, but they’ve turned to the side a little, putting their body between you and them, so it’s not entirely clear. Frisk also has the habit of tucking their hands into their long sleeves or wrapping them around and between their fingers, which seems an odd idiosyncrasy for someone who uses their hands to speak.

Then their hands come back out, and Frisk’s eyes gleam with humor. “I’ll translate for you, _Sans_ ,” they emphasize.

He grimaces.

“don’t start that, you-” (donut? Something like that) he cuts off before he gets any further, and pulls his other hand out of his pocket finally. “i think i can remember how to do this,” he says in his low voice, but this time a word or two is accompanied with signs.

You breathe a sigh of relief, then rush on to reassure him, “You don’t have to like, sign everything you say just, um, maybe for emphasis? Or I might ask you to spell a few things out, if that’s okay.”

“no problem, boblem,” he replies, spelling out the “boblem” with unhurried gestures of his skeletal fingers. They seem pretty nimble, actually, and you don’t have a problem (or a boblem) reading his phalanges at all. You find yourself smiling despite your earlier frustration at the sheer ridiculousness of emphasizing a nonsense word, but at least you’re in on the joke, now.

Frisk is toying with the apple-printed skirt they have on over a pair of cuffed jeans, and you take another calming breath while you try to remember what you’d been about to say.

“So, you’re interested in Em-Stem,” you say, trying to recenter the conversation around Frisk’s educational goals, verbally using the common phonetic for MSTEM, the acronym blanket term for the emerging interdisciplinary departments focused on combining monster and human knowledge in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. “Any particular concentration that appeals to you? I mean, it’s no problem if you’re not sure y-”

“Soul Studies,” Frisk signs decisively before you finish your sentence.

Oh. Uh, well. A controversial choice to say the least. The reintroduction of souls to humanity as an observable quantity rather than a philosophical and theological concept had been a rocky process, to say the least. While many religious leaders had more or less smugly accepted the existence of souls as proof of their own doctrines and left it at that, others had railed against pre-mortem observation, or even acknowledgement of souls as observable entities, as inherently blasphemous. You were hardly well-read on the subject, but from what you’d gleaned it seemed like for monsters, souls were also a sort of reproductive organ (although there is some debate on even as to describing a soul as an ‘organ’, considering they lacked biological components).

You glance at Sans for some sort of reaction to or context for Frisk’s statement, but he’s just slumped there looking...not bored, exactly, but you notice his eye sockets must be rather flexible because it almost looks like they’re closing? Frisk just continues to look at you expectantly from under their messy dark brown bangs. There’s something very personable, almost extroverted about them, despite not being very talkative.

“If you’re interested in Soul Studies, I understand why you’d want to be attending here as opposed to anywhere else,” you say as evenly as you can. “The program might be small, but considering a lot of it is being invented as they go along, it’s a unique opportunity to innovate and become a part of shaping an emerging discipline.” Putting it into the context of your work is actually helping a lot to reduce your discomfort. “After all, that’s why I’m here. Adaptive Coordination is a new thing too, and it’s been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life to be able to help create a new way of teaching and learning.” You’re feeling a little more confident in keeping things appropriate.

“Can you tell me more about the program?” Frisk inquires, leaning forward a little. “Can students be involved in scans, or is it strictly observation?”

You blink in surprise. “Oh! We don’t even have that kind of equipment here. Actually, to the best of my knowledge, scanning equipment and the resulting data aren’t allowed outside of the Royal Scien-”

Frisk actually makes a little grunt of frustration, startling you enough that you drop the end of your sentence. They immediately gesture apologetically, and when you look over at Sans, he hasn’t moved or even seemed to have noticed Frisk’s outburst. He looks like he might just take a nap right there, in fact. You kind of envy him.

“I knew that already, I don’t know why I even asked,” Frisk replies, and you find yourself remembering that Frisk is in fact someone with the kind of connections to gain access to that sort of information though the royals. Toriel’s been their guardian since they all emerged to the surface, after all, and queen of the monsters still outranks Royal Scientist, last time you checked. So couldn’t they have just asked?

Maybe there’s some sort of family drama going on with them. It’s possible Frisk’s family doesn’t approve of their interests, or maybe they’re just fighting.

Either way, it’s not like it’s a situation you’re unfamiliar with; plenty of the human students have had to deal disapproving families who’d much rather see them going into traditional human fields. Luckily, the fact that Ebott University doesn’t require any sort of monetary payment on the part of the students goes a long way to making sure the students’ aspirations aren’t completely derailed by lack of family support. It also ensures the best students aren’t excluded by such minutiae as inability to pay- yet another reason this place has won you over so completely.

“Well, how about this,” you suggest, rather than asking any questions that might dredge up family tensions simmering under Frisk’s laconic surface. “After we’re done here, would you like a tour of the department and related facilities? That way you can get more of a sense what we have here for yourself. Meetings aren’t in session right now and won’t start up again for another two months, but it’ll give you an idea of where everything is and how it all works. Even if you do declare Soul Studies right away, you still have to take prerequisites before you’ll even be going to meetings in those buildings, but there’s no reason you can’t take a look.” You smile encouragingly.

Frisk nods enthusiastically, then glances over at Sans. He’d been pretty quiet during all that, but he perks up a little at the suggestion of a tour.

“if s’not too much bother, I was hoping to see the observatory.”

“Of course,” you agree readily, then pull one of the decidedly non-optional bits of paperwork back in front of you. “We go right by it on the way, so we might as well stop there first. But before that, I still have some questions for Frisk, if that’s all right.”

“Shoot,” they indicate saucily. Their extremely round, placid face gives away very little information but you think you might have even seen a wink? What a peculiar young person.

“What is your living situation, and is it likely to change when and if you start here? This is only meant to determine how much assistance you might need in regard to transportation, housing, food...that sort of thing.”

Sans shifts on the loveseat slightly, remembering to take his hands out of his pockets again. “kid’s staying with me’n m’ brother right now. Our place is right around the corner, so it’s just more convenient and we don’t mind having ‘em.”

“So, with family?” you inquire, and both just nod. You move your pen to the part of the document for monster families, which omits the need to describe exact relationships and instead allows for the relative ambiguity of monster households. In the latter days of the underground, monsters often formed households filled with unrelated people in the wake of “falling down”, which you gathered from context was some kind of wasting sickness, often fatal. Parents lost children, children lost parents...but no one had gone without a family if it could be helped, and if a family was desired. The intake forms designed for a hybrid institution reflected this.

“Do you have any concerns about your food or housing? Transportation? Are you interested in being assigned a volunteer position or work-study program?” They indicate negative to all of those, so you just finish with, “Okay, I’ll put you down as ‘family providing’.” They nod, so you continue. “Speaking of which, are there any other members of your household, are any of them dependent on you, or possibly in need of assistance?”

Another negative. “Papyrus works, and Sans...” Frisk grins a little. “He’s fine. And that’s all of us.”

You assume “Papyrus” must be the brother Sans had mentioned, although you’re not exactly sure how to pronounce that.

“Do you want to put either down for emergency and secondary contacts? It’d make the next part simpler, but you don’t have to.”

Frisk glances over at Sans, who shrugs. Frisk nods back at you.

“All I need is name, address, and phone numbers for Sans and his brother then.” Instead of going to the trouble of having them spell everything for you while you look back and forth between them and the paper, you just hold out the clipboard towards them until Sans takes it. To your surprise, he appears to be left-handed. Or is handedness even a thing with monsters? None of the monsters you work closely with _have_ hands. Although the cramped way Sans holds the pen and curls his arm around makes you expect chicken scratch, you can see that his tiny, rounded letters and numbers are perfectly legible.

“My handwriting is terrible, so I figured I’d spare you” Frisk supplies with the hint of a smile. They seem eager to smooth over the earlier awkwardness, but you honestly don’t feel any discomfort lingering. Who knows, maybe they were worried you’d ask why they weren’t staying with Toriel, but it honestly isn’t any of your business.

Sans hands you back the paperwork, and although you only glance over it, you see he really wasn’t kidding about living close.

“Heh, you all really _are_ right around the corner, huh?” you observe absently. “You won’t have to worry about being late, I bet.”

“is that a challenge?” Sans replies with a wink.

Although the wink is somewhat distracting on account of seeing the bone socket of a skull close suddenly, his comment annoys you a little. As if just because you have an office and a desk, you’re the administrator of a no-fun zone for recalcitrant children. You don’t even work with children, but a lot of the human students seem to carry over the belief from earlier experiences that you’re personally invested in wiping their noses. It gets old.

“It’s no skin off _my_ ass if they are,” you state tersely, then feel your face heat when you realize what you’re cussing at work again. So much for keeping it appropriate for a personage, or actually thinking before words come out of your mouth. “I mean…just saying. They’re responsible for themself.”

Sans just stares at you for a long moment, then throws his head back and physically rocks with laughter. You can see the bones in his neck. That _are_ his neck.

“n-no-no _skin_ off your-” he actually falls over to the side, and starts nudging at Frisk. “why haven’t i _heard that one_ before?” he groans at Frisk between paroxysms of hilarity, weakly remembering to sign a bit even as he’s rolling around, the loose collar of his t-shirt pulling down and exposing his clavicle and the top of one or two ribs, and the darkness between. It’s an interesting view-nothing really in there but bones, is there? While you’re not sure why he thinks what you said is so funny, his mirth dissipates your annoyance rather than heightening it.

“i’m stealing it,” He wheezes weakly. “i’m _stealing_ that (from you),” he repeats, guffawing as he points, and you’re just waiting to see if the show’s going to end soon. “why haven’t I heard that?”

“You don’t spend enough time around humans,” Frisk comments casually. “We’ve got the monopoly on skin.”

“ _you_ spend too much time with toriel,” Sans deflects, catching his breath. “’s like you forgot how to say curse words.”

Frisk’s eyes glitter with amused intent under their dark lashes. “It’s like _you_ forgot how to keep your bones in your shirt.”

Sans frowns, surprising you again with the expressive flexibility of his skull, then glances down and scrambles to tug his neckline back into place. His face looks a little...iridescent? for a moment, but it’s hard to tell in the incandescent bulb and magic light combo you’ve got in your office; florescent bulbs give you a headache.

Their hearty but harmless bickering is the kind of habit you’d usually find irritating, but with these two it comes off as sincerely affectionate rather than like personal sniping, or compensating for an inability to communicate. You actually really like them both. Frisk seems to have the kind of passionate drive to learn and make connections that you can relate to, and Sans, well...he’s just a mellow, trashy little...person. Skeleton. Whatever. His smartassery manages to be kind of charming, and so does his odd modesty.

“I guess I’m just surprised I haven’t seen you around, considering I work here and live on what’s technically campus housing,” you say as if that slight detour hadn’t occurred.

Sans seems to have sorted out what apparently counts as dishabille for him, and just shrugs.

“’m out of town a fair amount.”

“Okay,” you reply simply, then stand up with less pain than you were expecting. “Let’s do the tour now.”

You’re a little abrupt, but they both rise to their feet agreeably enough.

“Do I need to do placement testing, or pick out classes or something? I thought there would be more paperwork,” Frisk signs without seeming all that interested in being proven right.

You think about it, but you’d really rather get the physical activity out of the way while you’re in relatively little pain, and these two seem to be less than great at sitting in offices and filling out forms. You have to admit that Frisk’s indifference to decorum combined with Sans being more or less the walking, breathing manifestation of a messy bedroom makes you feel a lot more relaxed about working with them, despite the initial problems communicating.

“Nope. Let’s do the fun part first,” you reply with a grin. They both return it, then follow you out of your office and down the hall toward the exit to the administrative building. On the way, you stop by Diane’s office to request the keys you’ll need, and you go over the introductions without incident this time. Although Frisk’s lip movements and expressions are a part of ASL, they’re different from someone who’s actually speaking verbally, and don’t contain the same information. Frisk is less expressive than most Deaf and HoH people you’ve known, at least facially. They get their point across well enough, but it’s a grounding experience to have Diane’s lips to read for a minute or two.

“You three going on a tour? Great idea. Where to?”

“Sans wants to see the observatory, and then we’re gonna stop by Em-Stem and Soul Studies.” You frown thoughtfully, and add, “Why don’t you throw the ones for MAHI (sorry, that’s Monster and Human Interaction) on there too, just in case?” You raise your eyebrows at Frisk. “We can decide if we wanna see Social Sciences after the first two.”

You put on your outdoor coat and strap on one of your smaller bags containing various small necessities and comfort items in under it, and reassure yourself by touching the small bottle of water in the coat’s capacious pockets. Frisk has a coat as well, but Sans just zips up his hoodie and waits for you to finish bracing yourself before pushing the door open with a suddenly mittened hand. You glance down; it seems he had kept the mittens in the pockets of his hoodie the whole time. It makes you smile, but you’re not sure why. “Thanks,” you murmur as you pass by him on the way out.

You use your chin to indicate the dome of the observatory, which isn’t very far. You’re grateful, since the chilly wind whipping past you reminds you that your joints are on a timer today. Frisk walks briskly and stoically, eventually overtaking you with their shoulders hunched only slightly in their soft-looking felted wool peacoat. They’ve wrapped their hands back into their over-long sweater sleeves again before shoving them into the pockets of the coat, so you’re not really expecting them to make conversation on the way.

At least it’s not snowing, and there’s no ice on the ground today. It’s a little dry, even though there’s a high haze of overcast obscuring the sun. Despite seeming underdressed for it, Sans seems to almost relish the icy air whipping past his face, his flexible eye sockets narrowing a bit, but less in resistance to it than what appears to be enjoyment. It really is remarkable; the white points that float like pupils in the cavernous sockets don’t become less visible, even in daylight. It’s as if they exist in another dimension where the usual laws of light and shadow don’t really apply.

He catches you looking and meets your eyes for a second. You glace away reflexively since you’re not big on eye contact, but grin at his enthusiasm, at least compared to his earlier sleepy-seeming indifference. He grins back as you come to a stop outside the squat, domed building and yank the ridiculous lanyard out of your pocket to start fumbling for the correct key.

You shoulder the door open heavily (again, why do you keep forgetting to just press the goddamn button today?) and flail around for the light switch. You hit it, and wince as you realize you’ve forgotten your anti-industrial-light hat, but you try to get the strained look off your face as you turn around to address them.

“Astronomy is actually one of the more popular programs in the sciences here, but you wouldn’t really know it from the look of this place,” you say, gesturing around at the cluttered and well-worn interior filled with equipment, counters, desks, and papers.

Sans shakes his head a little as he enters and slowly, and pinches his middle finger and thumb together as they draw away from his sternum. “feels really lived-in,” he elaborates. “you can tell people are really into what they do here.” His face gets sort of soft and vague, and he wanders around the big room fiddling with bits of things and looking through piles of photographs and printouts. You don’t bother asking questions or trying to explain, since you don’t know what most of this stuff is or what it does, and it looks like he’s got a pretty good grasp on how to find whatever he wants a closer look at. Frisk is watching Sans putter with a fondly indifferent expression on their face, but when you make a motion inviting them to converse, they turn to you readily enough.

“So, you seem like you have a really firm idea of what you want out of your experience,” you comment, not making it a question but rather an invitation to share their thoughts. Frisk tilts their head ambiguously, but answers gamely enough.

“The Soul Studies concentration is the reason I’m here.”

You nod. “Well, I guess I don’t have to tell you that it’s still a bit of a controversial field,” you sign, not bothering to speak verbally anymore since Sans is hunched over in a corner near a pile of something, and you’d probably just be distracting him.

“In fact, since you’re kind of a… highly visible? person, you might want to take some steps to sort of prepare yourself for backlash, if you think that might be a thing for you,” you continue. “You’d have a much better idea of what the case will be there than, I do, of course.”

Frisk’s eyes glitter between their lashes. “Have there been problems?”

“Mostly just a buttload of hate mail,” you say with a wry smile. “I think they said some people tried to break into the building a few times, but I don’t know what they think we have in there? It’s just a place for them to exist in while they talk about it. Just some research papers, a few diagrams, the books that have been written so far, which isn’t much... Even the printed information from the scans are highly private, considering they’re from living individuals, and have to be loaned out from the Royal Libraries with a chain of custody, and an attendant...” you trail off. “Even the alternate format materials I’ve created have to go back right along with the paper ones. We don’t keep any of that here.”

Frisk leans forward eagerly. “You’ve seen them?”

You raise your eyebrows apologetically. “One or two, but I don’t actually understand any of the information in them,” you try to explain. “And I can’t really… tell you about it. Uh, legally. It’s like medical information.” If you remember correctly, most of it had seemed to be some sort of sequences corresponding to hexadecimal color codes, or at least that’s what it had reminded you of. Even sharing that much isn’t really allowed, though. But Frisk waves down your defensiveness, smiling gently in a way that reaches their long, heavily-lashed eyes.

“I just think it’s cool,” they clarify.

You smile again. “It _is_ pretty cool. The program so far is modeled almost entirely after monster-style methods, considering there really isn’t any pre-existing human knowledge about souls that predates the fall of the barrier,” you sign thoughtfully. “But it also doesn’t seem like a lot of monsters are willing to come forward and really present themselves as experts, either. Less as if they’re uncomfortable, though, and more like they don’t know why or how humans would study souls?”

“Right now it’s just Professor Bob; otherwise I guess we have Gerson, who comes in about twice a month to answer some questions, and he decides which ones. It’s almost more like a club than a department. Even a few people who work here seem to think...well, people make certain _assumptions_ about what goes on there. But a lot of it is really just supervised encounters, which I’m told isn’t like, um, canoodling. Debate and exploration of existing papers and online information. And the scan info we get access to sometimes, of course, not that I’m a hundred percent sure the people in the department know much more than I do about what they mean,” you elaborate.

Frisk looks down for a second and seems to come to a decision.

“I might be able to help with that,” they sign tightly.

You feel a little surprised, then wonder why you would be. Of course Frisk would know more about souls, presumably having access to more monster-based information about them, than possibly any other human alive today. And they did have connections...

“I don’t mean to overstep,” you begin hesitantly, “but do you mean with your own knowledge, or with greater access to the materials? I’ve heard you knew Dr. Alphys personally, or that she’s a, um, a part of your family? I’m aware that she’s the one who decides what equipment and materials are allowed to be accessed by the college, and I just...” You trail off as Frisk’s expression changes.

“Alphys has… concerns about human access to knowledge about souls. And her reasons...I can’t say it’s not justified” Frisk hesitates before they continue. “But so are mine,” they finish.

“you’re downright chatty today, buddy” Sans appears almost out of nowhere in your peripheral vision, making you jump. “that excited to start school, huh? can’t say i blame you if ’s all as interesting as this,” he adds with a last glance around the room. “but i don’t wanna hold you up anymore than i already have. so let’s go to the next stop, ‘kay?”

As you walk back towards the door, you indicate the dish of candy that Wilhelmina leaves out at reception for everyone regardless of whether classes are active or not. “Feel free to take one. Or some, or none,” you say with a smile. “My coworker says it should to be obvious they’re for everyone, but I think a little encouragement can’t hurt.”

Sans gives a quiet chuckle, and you stare at him quizzically. He looks at Frisk, then back at you.

“it’s the second coming of papyrus,” he comments cryptically. “they don’t even know they’re doing it, and it blows me out of the water every time.”

Frisk takes pity on you finally, signing “encouragement,” then grabs a piece of candy out of the dish and fingerspells “encourage-M-I-N-T” with an indulgent eyeroll at Sans.

“Ohhhh,” you lilt, finally understanding.

“Ohhhhh,” you groan in disbelief, taking the striped candy from Frisk.

Then, you cover your face and start giggling.

Encourage-mint.

It’s a fucking pun, and you didn’t even think of that until they hung a lampshade the size of the universe on it. Par for the course for you; it’s like jokes are on a timed delay sometimes. Maybe that’s why they hit harder, because it takes longer for you to process it.

Wait.

You uncover your face and goggle at Sans.

“Was _that_ why you were laughing about the ‘skin off my ass’ thing so much? Because-” you start laughing harder, “because you don’t-” your eyes start to tear up. “You _literally_ don’t have any skin on your ass,” and now you cover your face again because it’s actually really funny. The more you think about it, the harder you laugh because he was probably making jokes of that caliber the whole time, and you couldn’t understand a _fucking word_ he was saying. No wonder he looked like no one showed up for his birthday party earlier.

“I’m sorry,” you wheeze, trying to wipe your eyes and regain your composure, but then you see his face and it sets you off again, and you can hear Frisk huffing along with you. He just looks so surprised.

“wow,” your hear him say, and you wipe your eyes quickly so you don’t miss cues. “no one’s laughed at my jokes like that in a few years,” he comments wryly, grinning easily again and putting his hand on the door handle. “’cept tori, a‘course,” he adds with an odd look you can’t read, then yanks the heavy door open and lets in a squall of wind.

“Well, I hope that it makes up for me being so slow on the uptake,” you reply weakly, pulling the wad of keys and lanyards and god-knows-what out of your pocket again to lock the door behind you. “Now I’m sorry I couldn’t understand you before, I probably missed out.”

“Mostly just bad science jokes,” Frisk signs immediately.

You nod toward the Biology and Medicine building, and then everyone shoves their hands back in their pockets for another silent and chilly trek, although the warm atmosphere from the shared laughter lingers.

As you walk, you think a little more about the controversial nature of souls among humans, and the subtle but pervasive cultural shifts that had occurred since the monster’s emergence to the surface. It was strange finding out you have body parts you never even knew existed. Except not really since it’s not like there was the same sort of hubbub around the discovery of the interstitium, which really _was_ a body part everyone had all along and never knew about.

The thing is, you’re not really a fan of thinking too much about your body, because you sort of have to all the time, just to live your day to day life in little enough pain and fatigue to function. The idea that there are even more things about it that could possibly go wrong or make your life harder, well. Your soul, you assume, can just take care of itself like human souls have apparently been doing for millennia.

The knowledge that souls were not only real but a lot more tangible than anyone had ever guessed had affected a lot of things for almost everyone, and in sometimes really weird ways. Peoples and cultures around the world had reacted differently, but they’d certainly all reacted. The trends reflected a million little moments of personal revelation without much concrete information to ground them in. Most monsters seemed reticent to explain much about them other than they existed, humans and monsters all had them, and that however monsters had children had to do with their souls. In this nation, even the casual popularity of “heart” symbolism had undergone a sort of reverse renaissance, disappearing from emoji selections and valentine’s day products alike, now that its significance had been re-contextualized.

Always fascinated by writing, languages, and symbolism, your curiosity had been piqued by that. You’d read a research paper claiming to debunk a pre-surface theory that the heart symbol’s origin as representative of the seedpod of a now-extinct contraceptive plant circa the 6th century BCE.

Rather, the paper had asserted, the “sylphium” referred to in the ancient artifacts was actually a sort of monster-human congress that was unable to result in offspring, as the two species were incapable of interbreeding due to the incompatibility of their physical substance. After all, human bodies are made of organic matter; monsters’ bodies are mostly made of a substance or energy they called magic, with properties unlike any known to humanity before the barrier fell. It had made you a little uncomfortable, maybe because although the paper itself had not been especially titillating, it had somehow come off as if the author had found writing it to be.

Another article, anonymous but supposedly by a monster, had hinted at the idea that human sexuality had had a reputation for shallowness, or a kind of selfishness, and was considered to be slightly deviant among monsterkind. However, the mere fact that monsters had been aware of the existence and mechanics of human sexuality had been latched on to and later led to rampant speculation and, it can be assumed, experimentation by individuals, and oh god, why were you thinking about _that_ while giving a tour to a prospective student and what you assume is their family member?

You try to think about the cold wind and will the heat in your face to flee as you clear your throat. It still impresses you not only that new taboos and hangups could be so widely adopted by most of humanity so quickly, but that your own feelings could become so oddly reactive to a concept that was utterly unknown to you until you were already in your twenties. Actually, that wasn’t exactly right. It seemed as though monsters tended to be more embarrassed by human sexuality, and humans by souls existing and what that could mean, but, well. It makes sense that culture shock between entirely separate species would run deep and have some unforeseeable side effects.

This time you finally remember to shove your shoulder against the button to open the door automatically, even though you have to take a step back after unlocking it and messily shoving the keys back in your coat pocket. Once all three of you are inside, you pull the water bottle out of the other pocket, take a swig, then turn towards them.

“Well, this is the right place for science jokes, if you’ve got more, since right now Soul Studies is being housed in the biology and medical section,” you say, then start leading them down the hall. “That might change, since it’s still really new and we’re not sure how big it’s going to get, or how...what kind or size of equipment might be necessary...” you trail off, feeling a little excited at the prospect of a flourishing new field coming to light, especially with the acumen or assistance of Frisk Dreamurr, human ambassador of monsterkind.

“huh,” Sans comments absently. “guess y’gotta put it somewhere.”

You blink. “Well, but...isn’t it like...uh, a body part?”

They both look over at you with a strange expression, then each other. Oh. You guess not.

“ol alphie must be keepin’ a tighter lid on it than I thought,” Sans says dryly, but not derisively. Still, you worry your apparent ignorance might be misrepresenting the department’s credentials, so you hasten to reassure them.

“I hope you understand, any knowledge I have about this would be whatever I’ve come across personally-I’m not actually a member of Soul Studies! I coordinate curricula so I have to have a passing familiarity with how the programs are run, but I’m not an expert in all of them. I’m sure the students and mentors of this program-”

Sans has been waving his hand at you placatingly for your whole speech, but you finally slow down enough for him to cut in.

“s’fine, don’t mind me. like the kid said, I don’t spend a lotta time around humans. just, uh, an odd idea to me i guess. sorry.”

You arrive at the elevator that heads to the second floor of the building, where the smallish set of rooms that house the Soul Studies department, such as it is, are located. You hit the button and wait, feeling flustered but unsure what else there might be to say about it. Frisk’s expression might be a little perturbed, but you don’t think it’s at you. Maybe it’s frustration with Dr. Alphys, if that’s the “Alphie” Sans had been referring to. It would make sense.

Sans scratches his chin with the back of his thumb bone for a second, then turns to you.

“so, a body is something you _have_ , right? you don’t say, ‘i _am_ a body.’ you say, ‘i _have_ a body.’ right?”

The elevator dings, and you nod cautiously as you hold the door and invite them into it. You catch another whiff of the dry, nostalgia-inducing scent you noticed earlier. A memory niggles at you but you push it away, trying to concentrate on moving and listening at the same time. You press the button and lean back against the side of the elevator so you can see what the other two might say.

Sans’s grin gets a little wider.

“soul’s the _you_ that has the body.”

You feel your face scrunch up, and you almost miss Frisk cutting their eyes sharply at their skeletal relative. But you’re definitely distracted. And sort of freaked out.

“But...isn’t that like...your...brain? Your personality and stuff?”

“heh. well, not to sell myself short, but I don’t exactly have one of those. a brain,” he clarifies, raising the tops of his eye sockets like brows. “but i’m still slingin’ snappy comebacks, so it’s gotta be coming from somewhere.”

He’s looking at you sidelong in amusement, but then his eye lights flicker (whoa) and his grins flattens a bit.

“hey, uh. sorry. i’m freakin you out. it’s nothing you need to be worried about, ‘k?”

You shut your mouth with a snap, and realize Frisk’s been holding the door of the elevator open on the second floor for an unclear amount of time, watching you both cryptically.

“I’m!” you start, then modulate your volume a little. “I’m not exactly freaked out, I’m just, uh, it’s a lot to think about. I guess I never really looked into it as much as some people do,” you finish, stepping past Frisk to lead the way towards your goal, which luckily is only a few more feet away.

“Okay, so this is where the magic happens,” you say glibly as you turn the key in the door, trying to recover your composure and succeeding somewhat. “Literally, sometimes,” you add with a smile. There. That’s better. You flick half the switches and wince only slightly as the florescent lights bathe the room in a whitish glare, not very alleviated by the overcast sky outside, which is nonetheless visible through the open blinds.

You walk into the space that has a few small desks scattered about, a few padded chairs and some tables. An extra long table against one wall has some papers scattered on it. You should…

something.

You…

should...

“The head of the program right now is Professor Bob, and everyone says she does a good job of generating discussion and providing praxis without breaching any of the confidentiality issues or the-the….”

You’ve gathered up the papers into your hands, but they’re shaking so hard you’re having a hard time holding onto them.

That’s weird. Are you...sick?

You look over at Sans, and realize Frisk’s hunched back is to you, which is just as well since you...you forgot to sign.

You’re holding the papers in your shaking hands. What are they? They’re starting to bend and fold in your grip, you can’t tell.

“I, uh, I’m sorry? What...was I saying?” you whisper hoarsely.

Sans looks at you in concern, then takes a few steps forward.

“hey, are you okay? I really didn’t mean to-”

He leans in and peers at your face closely. Your teeth chatter, and you’re embarrassed. What the fuck is wrong with you? Maybe you just need to-

The tiny lights in Sans’ eyesockets go out completely as he stiffens in shock.

f r i s k

It feels like the word is being traced onto the inside of your skull with a cold fingertip.

w h a t h a v e y o u d o n e .

You tear your eyes away from the black sockets in front of you and look at Frisk, who has turned back around and is holding themself tightly, hands running over their abdomen in an oddly disturbing manner.

“We have to get out of here. Now,” they sign.

Sans’ eyes flicker back into existence, but the points are hard-edged and tiny.

“you said-”

Frisk barks a noise of urgency. “Later,” they sign urgently. “He’s coming. Can we take a shortcut?”

Sans darts a tense look at you, then turns back to Frisk.

“ _who’s_ coming?”

“A killer,” they reply desperately, face carved with grief.

Sans sags heavily for a long moment, but his back is to you. Before you or Frisk can say another word, Sans moves more quickly than you’d imagined he was capable of, since he’s already out the door. It click-thuds behind him with finality.

You and Frisk stare at each other; they’re still holding themself as if they expect to fall apart at any moment. Their mop of thick, blunt-cut hair shudders a moment as they take a deep breath. Their heavy-lidded eyes narrow further and their mouth falls into a straight line. They stride forward determinedly and take your arm, leading you slowly toward the door. You resist a moment, although for some inexplicable reason, you’re shaking less than you were a minute ago. “A killer is coming” is NOT reassuring news, so why do you feel almost...relieved? You have no idea what’s going on, or how Frisk can know that someone is coming to do something terrible to them. That was definitely not ambiguous.

Frisk looks at you.

“We don’t want to end up trapped in the room,” they state decisively.

You allow yourself to be led as Frisk opens the door and peers out carefully, holding you slightly behind them.

Then you duck instinctively as a loud bang echoes down the hallway, tugging at Frisk’s arm. You think it came from the left, so you point and gesture.

You hear Sans’ voice, and you can’t make it out but he sounds...calm. Then, another echoing bang. You look at Frisk questioningly and they purse their lips, looking frustrated. Your hand is still shaking violently but you manage to steady your fist just enough.

“Sans,” you gesture silently. You point again.

Their eyes flash darkly, and they drag you both up from where you’ve crouched in the doorway and start to lead you slowly down the hallway. Not to the right and back to the elevator but towards where the loud slamming sounds and Sans’ voice had come from. You’re breathing heavily, and you know you’ve just kind of shut down and Frisk is practically a baby and you should be the one protecting them, but you can’t _think_ , you can’t-

You and Frisk turn the corner, and the hall beyond is filled with a dimness that can’t be penetrated by the overcast daylight coming in through the hall’s windows. It’s very hard to see but you can tell you’re looking at Sans’s silhouette from the back. It looks like there might be a prone figure in front of him. Sans’s hands are in his pockets, and his posture seems casual, almost relaxed.

You look at Frisk, who seems relieved for a split second before their face twists enigmatically.

They turn and look at you.

“We should call someone,” they urge.

“Oh,” you whisper, then belatedly fumble in your pockets for your lanyard, which has an emergency fob on it. Frisk pulls out an oddly bulky rectangular object.

It’s a monster phone. You’ve heard of them, you know what they look like and that they’re nearly impossible to get, but you’re never seen one in person before. They’re doing something with it, but you’re trying to split your attention between whatever is going on in that dim area, and pulling the pin out of your emergency fob so campus security can get the fuck over here like immediate style and sort out whatever the hell this is. You also pull out your phone to send a shaky text to the proper emergency number, with your location and highest priority code, although you’re not entirely sure what this situation _is_ exactly. You barely manage, and by the time you look back up to Frisk they’re putting the monster phone away; you wave to grab their attention.

“What’s happening,” you sign. “What _is this_?”

Their eyes lock back onto the dim area the second your sentence ends, and you see a tear leak out of their eye only to be scrubbed away by one of their long, lovingly hand-knit sleeves.

“Sans pulled him into an encounter,” they reply after a long moment.

Encounter, that’s a magic thing. A monster thing… a _soul_ thing. Anything that happens in it, stays in it. Conversations, and...

“They’re fighting?” you croak.

Frisk’s head shakes, but you’re not sure it’s a refutation.

“It’s still his turn.”

That...doesn’t actually mean anything to you. Suddenly you think you see a flash, and you feel something hit the floor although you don’t hear anything this time.

A low, raw sound happens beside you and you snap your eyes back to Frisk.

“He doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He never did,” Frisk says disjointedly, almost like they forgot you’re here. Then their eyes refocus and they seem to see you. They take a deep, shuddering breath.

“[sign] will be here soon. It’ll be...soon.”

“I don’t know what [sign] is,” you reply.

Another shuddering breath. “Undyne,” they spell shakily.

Oh. Captain of the Royal Guard. Dr. Alphys’ wife. Eight foot tall fish lady. _That_ Undyne. You realize the sign Frisk had made resembled a fan held by the side of their face….a fin? It must have been a name sign for Undyne, whose grimly scaled visage you’d seen photos of before. You hope she lives up to her reputation because you’re feeling distinctly in need of rescue.

“Campus security will come,” you whisper absently, but Frisk isn’t looking at you anymore, anyways. Their arms are wrapped around themselves again, their fist pressing a tight circle into their chest over and over. It feels like a century goes by while you stare dully into the dimness in the hall of the BioMed building.

Then you hear a faraway slam; a lot of loud crashes, thumps, and bangs that sound like they’re coming nearer. You touch Frisk’s arm, and their head snaps toward you like a viper’s.

“Someone’s coming.”

Despite your anticipation you still jump when the door to the stairs behind the two of you slams open and hits the wall behind it hard enough that you’re surprised the windows don’t shatter.

A blue, scaly monster with a bright red topknot stomps towards you and wheels Frisk around by their shoulder. A faraway part of your brain that isn’t currently broken notes that while she is taller than any human you’ve ever seen, she’s probably not _eight_ feet tall. Wow. That eyepatch.

“What happened?!” she hollers into Frisk’s devastated face.

Frisk emits a tiny, anguished wail and points to the dim area.

“NGAAAAAHHHH!” Undyne shouts, and then runs right into the encounter, swallowed up by the dim area.

There are several more of what might be flashes, and blurry movement of some kind. After a few moments, the light and space around the monsters return to normal. Sans stands in the same spot, hands in his hoodie pockets, while Undyne crouches over a dark heap that doesn’t struggle.

She drags a bag you hadn’t seen before over and looks inside, says something sharp you don’t quite catch.

“What the hell was he going to do with this,” she adds, and you do understand that. You’re not sure you want to, though. You’re really not...feeling very well at all.

Your entire mind feels like it’s been stuffed full of cotton and novocaine, but you hear what might be the belated arrival of campus security. There are voices, at least.

Sans turns around, and you realize nothing about him is relaxed. He looks indescribably exhausted, and for the first time, he reminds you of something dead. Frisk totters forward hesitantly.

“heya, kiddo. looks like you were right. not that I expected anything else.”

You can’t see what they say; their back is to you.

After a moment: “nah. we all got choices.” his eyes flicker dully. “and we made em, didn’t we?”

Frisk breathes shakily, a tiny grunt slipping out. Now Undyne is calling someone.

“nothing to be done about it. and you know how good I am at doing that.”

Sans looks around Frisk a moment and slowly focuses on you, and the deep grooves under his eye sockets look freshly carved. His eyes are dull pinpricks.

“no skin off _my_ ass,” he intones humorlessly. “heh.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey so I just wanted to come back and add a little note. I posted ch1 of this story on Dec 8 and there's 115k+ words by the 31st because writing this is getting me through something. there's time to write when you literally can't get out of bed. It's full of shit i like, people like ones i know, jokes i think are funny, and actually i never originally intended to post it but  
> here we are.  
> and i love you for it.  
> if there's anything here for you, i love you.


	2. something brothering you?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [body horror, gore, extreme unreality]
> 
> [Soundgarden - The Day I Tried To Live](https://youtu.be/dbckIuT_YDc)

Hours later, you finally stagger through your front door, every cell of your body aching.

The questioning had seemed endless. Security, police, the Royal Guard, Undyne herself…

But you really didn’t know anything, and eventually they realized you’d just stopped talking and responding entirely. Diane had intervened, and you’d been given numbers to call, emails to write, and finally, blessedly, sent on your way.

You moan your way through the house to the bathroom, shedding bags, coat, and clothing as you go. You hang on to your phone just in case, then collapse on the side of the tub (very spacious and almost double-deep; the major selling point for you on taking this place, in addition to the fact that it was literally on campus grounds and extremely subsidized for staff) and start the tap. You stick your fingers under the rushing water and it’s almost painfully hot; perfect. Time to boil your sorry carcass into submission before the pain settles all the way into your bones and stays there.

But you really don’t want to think about bones right now, so you just concentrate on peeling off the rest of your remaining clothes.You try holding your breath and settling into the water slowly, but you’re too tired and you slip in all at once with a hiss. At least you don’t hit your head this time. You try to relax, you try not to think about anything. But you feel odd, insubstantial...you never did eat anything today, did you. Well. Don’t think about that either, or you’ll cry. You’re in no shape to fix anything, and it’s all just too much, and if you drown from passing out in the tub at least you have a good excuse this time.

You wish you had a cat. But if you got a cat, the poor thing would be lonely all the time with you working, and so you’d have to get two cats, and what if you had too many bad days in a row? Who would take care of them? Two cats is _more_ than twice the work of one, but it’s not right to leave something alone so much. You know because you’re alone so much, and you’re feeling it pretty hard right now.

You definitely don’t have the energy to wash your hair, which is probably ok since it doesn’t really need it yet. You do manage to slowly wash the rest of yourself, though, and you finish before the water gets cold. One win in today’s column.

You manage to dry yourself and put on some pajamas, even though it’s barely getting dark, and wander into your small but adequate kitchen and scrounge up a loaf of bread. You sit down at tiny table after gathering up your meds and your phone, and dial your sister for a video chat.

“Hey, Goober, how’s it shakin?” Your sister’s bright voice, the fact that she looks so happy to see you, everything seems so normal as you watch her duck into her room away from the noise of the kids…. You clutch the bag of bread to your chest and feel tears start to slide down your cheeks. Something in your chest hurts, but you don’t think it’s physical.

“Shit,” she says quietly. “What happened?”

“My intake today was Frisk Dreamurr.”

“Whoa,” she replies. “Did they say-”

“I took them and their relative to the Soul Studies department and someone was coming to blow it up and kill us I guess. Frisk’s family member stopped them. Then, uh. Undyne came.”

She’s just goggling at you.

“Can you tell me how you and the kids are doing? And, uh, Matt? Because I-I really need to eat something so I can take my meds, I just don’t wanna be-” your breath hitches, and you swallow tightly. You scrub tears away with a napkin. “I just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Uhhh,” she whispers. “Okay, you, um, you have something to eat?”

You fumble the bag of bread open and pull out a slice.

Your sister fills you in on all the details of her perfectly normal day, talks about Shonda and Nattie, what they’re up to, how their grades are. You slowly manage to chew and swallow your way through a few slices of bread despite your nausea, although it sits there like a bowling ball in your stomach. You swallow down your meds and finally, and Angie slows down and looks at you. She doesn’t hide her concern very well. And you suppose she’s justified in it; you’re really not okay.

“The weirdest part is,” you begin, apropos of nothing and just starting as if you’d been talking about it the whole time, “I felt the worst right _before_ it happened.”

“Well, what exactly did happen? I mean, how did it start? If you’re ready to tell me about it.”

You press your lips together.

“Everything was fine, we were just having this weird conversation about-about souls, actually.”

“Well, that makes sense,” she replies, managing not to look impatient. “You said the ambassador asked for a tour of the Soul Studies department, right? That’s where you were?”

You nod. “It was like...as soon as we got in there, I started to feel weird. Faint, or something. My hands were shaking and I thought...I don’t know what I thought. Then Sans looked at me weird, and got really angry with Frisk, and I-”

“Who the hell is Sans?” your sister asks as her patience finally stretches thin.

In the end it takes about half an hour to explain everything that had happened. You’re explaining that there wasn’t any news about who the person had been or what exactly they had been trying to do, when you blink and cut yourself off.

“Wait, what was I saying?”

Your sister’s staring at you, looking pretty freaked out.

“You started saying something about blood. About ‘all the blood came out.’ Are you okay?”

“Um. What?”

(what)

(what)

“I mean, it’s been a week now….are you sure you don’t want to see a therapist? You don’t even have to see someone through the college, I know you’re tired of getting asked about it over and over.”

“No, I...”

Oh. someone’s knocking on the door. Shit.

“Hey, sis. Looks like Vulkin’s here for my appointment, I gotta go.”

“Ok, Goob, it’s almost time for me to take the kids to school anyhow. Maybe...talk to her about this, I’m worried about you. Love you, okay?”

“Me too.”

You shut the computer and walk heavily to your door, the week’s trials and tribulations weighing on your joints, even though you just woke up. It’s like you feel the lack of sleep in every step.

It doesn’t help that every night, your dream that Frisk is trying to tell you something, but every time they open their mouth, all that pours out is the blood. Always the blood. And they don’t even speak with their mouth, why would you dream that?

You wish someone would tell you who that guy had been or what he was trying to do, but it seemed like no one knew any of that, or where he even was now. Frisk and Sans hadn’t come back either, hadn’t even called. Maybe Frisk has decided it wasn’t safe for them to pursue Soul Studies after all, at least not publicly?

It’s hard to care. It’s hard to think.

You open the door.

“Ah! Ah! I’ll help,” Vulkin chirps as she strolls through your front door, heading immediately to the couch in the front room where you usually have your treatments.

“Thanks, Vulkin,” you sigh. “Want anything?”

She doesn’t answer, but her wide rump waggles in agitation. You walk around and sit down in front of her, holding out your hands.

The soothing heat flows through your joints, teasing out the pain bit by bit. You have to admit that having access to monster healing has been life-changing for you, and you’ve got the best of the best here at Ebott. You blink slowly while she treats you, trying to piece together what you and your sister had just been talking about. For some reason...it’s like you can’t quite separate the conversations you and she have been having in the seven days since they attack. They all blend together.

“Not feeling better,” Vulkin says suddenly.

“No, I’m...I’m feeling better, Vulkin,” you say in confusion. “You always help me when you come here.”

“Mmm, mm,” she hums. Her cheeks glow, like they always do. But that particular sound is the one she makes when she disagrees with something, as you’ve come to learn over the past year.

“Smell the pain,” she adds cryptically.

“Uh...what?”

“Ahh. Not... helping? Okay...” Vulkin toddles back away from you.

“No, I didn’t mean anything like that,” you rush to reassure her. “I just don’t understand what you mean.”

“Something else? _Hugs_?” she emphasizes, but you hold up your hands as she approaches you again. It’s weird, she’s acting weird and everything isn’t okay and you just want to be alone.

“No, I-I don’t want a hug, Vulkin. It’s okay. Sorry,” you finish, voice dropping to a whisper.

“Ahhhhhh…….” she sighs, sounding brokenhearted. “Not helping.”

She waddles to the door, which you open for her passage, then close behind her.

You

Close

Why are you closing the door?

You open it, and walk into Diane’s office hesitantly. She looks up at you, and nods casually to the seat across from her where you usually sit when you visit.

“Hey, so. I was just wondering if you’ve heard from...from Frisk.”

She blinks. “Frisk Dreamurr?”

“Yeah. It’s just, I was wondering if they were still interested in coming here, even after the attack. Or attempted attack, whatever that was.”

“Well, no. I haven’t heard from them, but I guess they must have changed their mind. Thought you would have given up by now.”

“Are you sure? I mean, I was really hoping to talk to them before the new Soul Studies semester gets started, so they have a chance to-” you cut yourself off at the look on Diane’s face.

“Hey,” she says, sympathetic but serious. “I know this has been a hard time for you, and I’m not trying to...I just feel like I owe it to you to be honest. I think you need to take some time off.”

The water in the tub is almost boiling hot, but you decide to wash your hair after all. It probably needs it by now. Even though it’s been a long day (indescribably long), you feel like you need a win.

You wish you had a cat. But if you got a cat, the poor thing would be lonely all the time with you working, and so you’d have to get two cats, and what if you had too many bad days in a row? Who would take care of them? Two cats is _more_ than twice the work of one, but it’s not right to leave something alone so much. You know because you’re alone so much, and you’re feeling it pretty hard right now.

You blink. “Why would I need time off? I...”

Diane looks at you strangely. “The new semester started a week ago.”

You goggle at her.

“You’re kidding, right? It hasn’t been...”

A month. A month since someone came to the BioMed building where you were giving a tour of the facilities to Frisk and Sans.

You feel like you’re forgetting something important.

“Maybe you’re right, Diane. I’ll...think about it. Hey, do you mind if I take a walk? Get...some fresh air.”

Diane frowns. “Are you gonna be okay out walking by yourself? You don’t usually get that kind of exercise.”

“No, I’m just...” you don’t even finish your sentence as you walk out the door, down the hall, and take the elevator up and out of the building.

The next thing you know, you’re somewhere past the campus, deep in a residential neighborhood at an address you remember from Frisk’s paperwork. You really shouldn’t be here. It’s unprofessional. Maybe illegal? You don’t know and you probably can’t afford to care anymore. It feels like a thin tether holding you together is about to snap, and you can’t even think straight.

You knock slowly and determinedly on the door in front of you. Your fist shakes, but you don’t stop.

Eventually, your hand misses the wood because the door is open, and you look up.

It’s Sans the skeleton, possibly wearing the same outfit you last saw him in a month ago, and he doesn’t look happy to see you. He doesn’t look angry, either, or anything else. He just looks empty.

“it’s you,” he says through his fixed grin, forgetting to sign again but you actually understand because it’s not like there’s anything else to fucking say about it.

“What the fuck _happened_ to me?” you groan.

His eye lights are barely even visible.

“nothing,” he says, sounding impassive. “nothing happened.”

You shudder as an uncharacteristic rage tears through you, and lean with one hand on the doorjamb. It passes fairly quickly, and you’re grateful for that much at least. But you’re not leaving without some answers, since you’ve already come this far. It feels like the insides of your bones are trying to get out, or something.

It’s unbearable. Didn’t all of this _just happen_? It hasn’t been a month. There’s no way.

You look back up, then push yourself away from the door so you can sign, and maybe he’ll finally remember you can’t understand him without it.

“It’s an inarguable fact that _something_ happened, as in, someone tried to kill us? Or did you not remember that part? But I’m not talking about that and _you already know i’m not_ ,” and you’re not yelling but you’re practically slashing the air with your hands.

“So why don’t you _cut the shit_ and tell me why I feel like I’m walking around in two different places at once and haven’t fucking slept and apparently it’s _been a month_ since we took that tour? And then I can figure out if there’s anything I can do about before I lose my mind, my job, and pretty much everything else I almost killed myself to get, okay? How does _that_ sound?”

Well, it actually kind of looks like he _sees_ you now, at least. He sighs heavily, you can actually feel it stirring the front of your hair. He smells kind of...musty.

“come in,” he says simply, and you’re relieved he managed to take the hint and signed it at you as well. He steps back, and you enter a fairly large living room with a couch and a television, paintings on the walls, and a few bookshelves and hutches. There’s a stairway leading up almost immediately to the right that ends in a closed door. The front door shuts behind you, and the short skeleton leads you further into the house.

Sans walks at an unhurried pace through the living room and into a small dining room, but the wall ends halfway down from the ceiling and there seems to be a railing on the far side of the table. As you approach you see that there’s another floor below this one, and the downstairs den below is viewable through the railing. Frisk is seated on a low, plush-looking couch with a plate of waffles in their lap, and is holding one out to a yellow, lizardlike monster sitting next to them.

As you approach, the monster takes a large bite out of the waffle without looking away from the loud cartoon show they both appear to be riveted to; Frisk’s other hand darts down on their other side, and comes back up with a canister of whipped cream that they squirt into their mouth. Then, they hold the canister over a little farther, and the monster gets a mouthful as well. If you weren’t so fucked up inside, you’d have said something about how impressive their coordination is; neither look away from the show at any point. The blocky captions take up a lot of the bottom of the screen, so it must be a pretty dialogue-heavy show.

Sans wraps the sleeve of his hoodie around his bony hand, then slams his fist twice on the ceiling of the lower floor, making you jump. Frisk breaks eye contact with the screen finally and glances up; you suppose they’d worked out that that was a noise Frisk could hear, or at least feel.

“time to talk, I guess,” Sans intones dully.

Frisk sees you and their eyes go flat. They look at their friend and they both stand. The monster manages to be even broader than Frisk so you can’t see what they’re saying. But the monster speaks verbally, and you manage to catch a little of it.

“No, no...I’ll head home. It’s not a problem.”

Frisk’s hands flash, barely visible above their friend’s shoulder.

“I know. Don’t worry about it, okay?”

Frisk leans forward and wraps their arms around their friend, and you belatedly notice their companion doesn’t appear to have any arms. Explains the synchronization, if they’ve known each other as long as they seem to have, you suppose. Then Frisk leans forward and places a surprisingly tender kiss on their friend’s face, and they hesitate, glancing up at where you and Sans stand expectantly. The two below part, and the scaled yellow face smiles up at you encouragingly before they mount the stairs to the floor you’re on.

“Good luck,” the young monster says as they pass you, and for some reason you find it surprisingly heartening.

“Thanks,” you reply softly. You sense Sans behind you but don’t hear him say anything. After the door shuts behind Frisk’s friend, you turn your attention back to Frisk, who still hasn’t moved to come upstairs.

You really don’t know what the hell is going on here, but you also can’t leave. You feel like you’ve got no other options. So you wait.

“It’s a bad idea,” Frisk motions finally.

Sans makes an odd rustling noise beside you, and you shoot a glance at him.

“maybe you should just explain it anyway,” he mutters hopelessly, but at least he remembers to sign along.

Frisk manages to look upset and impassive at the same time, somehow.

“What else could I have done?” they sign frantically, gazing up at Sans, not you.

“only you know the answer to that,” he replies cryptically, then sighs again. “just come up here, kid. maybe you should try listening instead of jus’ running your own wheels all the damn time.”

Sans heads over to the dining room table, and pulls out a chair for you on the other side, points to it before seating himself. Frisk comes around and sits down with a thump but doesn’t say anything.

“You two don’t seem like you’re doing very well, either,” you comment, probably unnecessarily. “Look, I-” it’s actually really hard to explain, now that the moment’s here. But...they were there, they have to know what that nauseating moment of disconnect means. “Ever since that day, I haven’t been able to eat right, I can’t concentrate, I...I’m forgetting things. Or, remembering things?” No, that sounds absurd.

“I can’t sleep,” you try instead. “Every time I try I feel I like ca-” your voice disappears. “Like I can’t breathe,” you gesture silently. “It’s not a physical problem. But it’s causing physical problems. For me,” you finish, breathing a little heavily.

Sans and Frisk just sit there, staring despondently. At least, you think that’s what it is. Frisk is hard to read.

The anger returns.

“Frisk,” you start, and your voice is back. “What happened? Why did you know that guy was coming to blow up Soul Studies? Why did you think we would die?”

Sans glances sharply at you.

“he wanted to blow up the room? why?”

“I don’t know,” you say quickly, but you latch on to something that finally resembles an actual response to what you’re saying.

“Diane said he was some sort of obsessive anti-soul-whatever person; wasn’t even religious but thought teaching about real souls was gonna bring about the end of corporeal existence or corporeal humanity or whatever, I don’t really know. And I don’t know what happened to him, if he’s in prison or who has him, and I was hoping I could find that out too if you-” you suck in a deep, shuddering breath. “Do you know what they did with that guy?”

Frisk at least has turned their head to see what you’re saying, but the look on their face makes you shudder grotesquely. Their expression looks too much the same as the one from your recurring nightmare: the dead-eyed despair, the gout of blood from their mouth.

“doesn’t matter, I guess,” Sans mutters, eye lights dimming again. “me too this time, wasn’t it, kid? i go out swinging?”

He glances at Frisk, who remains expressionless. “huh. guess he got the jump. not that i couldn’t tell already,” he intones, gesturing vaguely at himself.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” you say, exasperation taking over. It feels like your stomach’s trying to both eat your spine and crawl up out of your throat simultaneously. “I saw you in that, that encounter thing. Or, I saw you walk right out of it at least. You didn’t seem...” you trail off, because actually he kind of _had_ seemed. “I didn’t know you were injured.”

“heh,” the skeleton laughs humorlessly. “i wasn’t. musta been thinking of some other sans.”

Frisk flinches.

“How did a month go by without me noticing? It feels like it just happened. Where did I go?”

Were you whispering that?

Frisk is looking at Sans now.

“i hate it when you get like this,” they gesture peevishly.

“i’m not like anything, kiddo,” he replies, grinning indifferently.

“Exactly,” they snap back.

You shove yourself back from the table, and the chair you were sitting in clatters over. “Wasn’t I just here?” you yell a little wildly.

“Did I come here already?” You look up at them, desperate.

Sans is standing, and he looks like he’s finally actually _seeing_ you. He starts to come forward but Frisk is up too, and is standing in front of him protectively. Why?

“hey, buddy, take it easy. you’re...” he peers into your eyes, and his eye lights turn into hard points. “you’re not looking so hot.”

His skeletal fingers clasp Frisk’s arm to peer around their broad body, but he doesn’t push himself forward again.

“I’m gonna flip out if someone doesn’t explain this to me,” you groan. You can feel yourself shaking apart, shaking even more than you were the day in the BioMed building. In the Soul Studies room, when Frisk had told you they were going to….they were going to…

“Frisk, where did the _all the blood_ come from?”

Frisk’s eyes crack open with a glow like the last gasp of coals.

“You want to know what happened so badly?”

Their gaze locks on Sans. He doesn’t seem to notice, but Frisk signs at him anyways.

“You were closest to the door, he even hit you with it coming in. It knocked you off balance, and it’s been so long you didn’t even recognize it as an attack. Not that that would have necessarily made a difference. When he saw you were a monster, he slapped you. That’s all it took. Your dust fell through his fingers, and the look on his face-you would have made a joke about it. ‘you look like you saw a ghost’. Like that,” Frisk says with shaking fingers.

“That’s when the thing he’d thrown on the floor blew up.”

Frisk’s reddened, haggard stare pins you in place. “Half the ceiling came down right on top of you. Crushed your spine instantly, I bet. Close to the neck. I remember what that feels like, choking because your body doesn’t exist in the same dimension as your brain anymore. Can’t breathe, can’t live... It just slips out of you, you can’t get it back.”

A high whining noise is filling your ears, and you wish it’d come and block your eyes, too. Every word they’re saying is shoving you back into that broken container from your dreams. You can’t breathe.

“I tried to get to you, I wanted to tell you what I was going to do. I don’t know why. It seemed important at the time, and Sans was already-” their hands lose form at that. “I thought it might even be better to just let it happen, finally. Just like I said. Because I-” they lose it again, but then their chin firms.

“The tables and supply closets turned into shrapnel. A piece of table tore through my body at the groin, and half a steel door went through my chest. My own shit was leaking out of me along with everything else, since it perforated my bowel. You don’t ever really forget that smell. Even with that, I might have lasted for hours, but my right lung was shredded by the steel piece. I fell down, but I started crawling over to you, I wanted you to know. That it was gonna be okay, it was finally going to end. I’d let it happen.”

They turn those fiery eyes to Sans. “Just like _you_ wanted, I guess.”

“that’s enough, frisk,” Sans says quietly.

“ _You wanted me to talk about it!_ ” they slash into the air, grunting with the effort.

“But _you_ were there,” they turn back to explain, and the whining in your ears gets higher. The thin thread holding you to yourself feels like it’s going to break any second; each word from them feels like it’s making what Frisk is saying _real_. Locking that reality into place right alongside what you saw happen. Making you _remember_ it.

“But I didn’t promise _you_. I had to ask. Even if I didn’t know it would work.”

They look at Sans again. “It shouldn’t have worked, and I don’t know why it did. I’m not even sure I meant for it to happen, even though...”

Is there someone at the door? They should open it.

But Frisk turns back to you. They just keep saying it.

“I tried to tell you. I tried to ask if you could accept it. But there wasn’t enough of me left. All that came out of my mouth was the blood, and there was so much of it. I could see you were still alive, even though your lungs were crushed; your heart too. I had to make a decision. You were already

dead and didn’t even know it yet, but you

could read

my lips

and

you

said-”

The thread snaps. You spill out all over yourself, your lap, the table. You scream, and your vision finally dims the way you’d been praying for as something hits the floor heavily, shreds apart.

“oh shit, oh _shit_ ,” you hear Sans’s voice chanting from what sounds like the bottom of an elevator shaft. “i... you’re- shit, _sorry_ , i’m-”

“ _SANS!?_ FRISK! WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THAT POOR HUMAN?” It’s a voice you don’t recognize.

“THAT’S WHAT THAT IS, RIGHT? HOW DID IT…? ...UGH.”

“frisk said something they shouldn’t have, paps,” you hear Sans reply heavily.

But it’s so far away, it’s got nothing to do with you. You’re somewhere else, and the voices blend, echo off the walls to drown in your ears. Meaningless.

“’s’my fault, i guess.”

“I SUPPOSE IT’S A GOOD THING THE GREAT PAPYRUS GETS OUT OF WORK EARLY ON FRIDAYS, THEN.”

Papyrus. _That’s the brother,_ what’s left of your mind supplies helpfully, but the voice seems to be coming from so high up. You can’t see him, though. You can’t see anything, but the next time he talks, he’s lower. Or you’re higher, you can’t really feel where you are. You don’t feel anything, and you know that’s for the best, isn’t it?

“I’M READY, LET’S TAKE THEM TO TORIEL’S.”

“dunno if that’s a good idea, bro.”

A long moment.

“OH, FRISK.” There’s more compassion there than disappointment.

“SO, THAT’S WHY YOU TWO HAVE BEEN SO MOODY. WELL, THE IMPORTANT THING IS ALWAYS TO CLEAN UP BIOHAZARDS BEFORE THEY SPREAD. THAT’S WHAT I ALWAYS SAY. ISN’T IT, SANS?”

“you sure do, bro.”

“THEN, YOU TAKE THAT OVER THERE, AND I’LL TAKE CARE OF THIS ONE,” and you feel a twisting like you’re being pulled thinner, dwindled, windowpaned like bread dough. You haven’t been moved at all, but you’re being...carried? Your hear the creak of stairs more clearly than you think you’ve heard anything else, then a patient sigh.

“I’M SURE THIS IS VERY UNCOMFORTABLE, BUT I ALSO HAVE VERY GOOD NEWS. I’M SURE YOU’LL BE DELIGHTED TO HEAR IT. JUST A FEW MOMENTS, AND…OH, DON’T DO _THAT_!”

The world flips, splits apart, making you sick again. Something...separating. Coming out? Something cool and hard leans against your middle, and it’s...soothing?

“YES, I’VE PLUGGED THE TUB, DO NOT WORRY. FORGIVE ME A MOMENT...”

Something cool, hard, and oddly...flexible...is touching you. Where exactly, you couldn’t say for the life of you.

Far away (Very Away) from this, you somehow also hear Sans. “just get a bowl or something, kiddo. it’s...wait, hand me that a sec.”

“WE HAVEN’T EVEN BEEN INTRODUCED, SO YOU’LL HAVE TO FORGIVE ME FOR BEING SO FAMILIAR. IT CAN’T BE HELPED FOR NOW. IT’S NOT LIKE YOU CAN EXPLAIN IT TO ME OTHERWISE. NOT WHEN YOU’RE... OH, YES! THE GOOD NEWS! YES! YOU ABSOLUTELY WON’T REMEMBER _ANY_ OF THIS PART AT ALL. THAT MAKES ALL OF THIS SO MUCH EASIER, DOESN’T IT? YOU MUST BE RELIEVED.”

You feel relieved.

“NYEH HEH HEH, YOU’RE WELCOME.”

In fact, although somewhere else something is definitely happening and it’s not very pleasant at all, the sliding away feeling you’ve been experiencing for… it’s been going on for… the sliding feeling has stopped. It’s like an anchor is holding you over some kind of abyss.

“INDEED, I CAN! THE GREAT PAPYRUS HAS NEVER LET ANYONE FALL, NOT EVEN ONCE. BUT I...”

You get the idea he’d been about to say something else, but he’s noticing something.

“I DON’T USUALLY DO THIS SORT OF THING, OF COURSE. AS A MATTER OF FACT, NEARLY EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS INCREDIBLY UNORTHODOX. HOWEVER! IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO!”

A tinge of unfamiliar embarrassment. You have no idea what there is to be embarrassed about, but you still feel it. The feeling’s just _there_ , and you don’t know where it’s coming from.

“EH...HEH.” The laugh sounds a little strangled now. “I’LL DO MY BEST NOT TO ‘REMEMBER’ THIS EITHER. BY WHICH I MEAN I WILL NEVER SPEAK OF THIS TO ANYONE, ESPECIALLY YOU. HOW DOES THAT SOUND?”

You feel relieved.

“SANS! WHAT ON _EARTH_ IS TAKING YOU SO LONG?”

Somewhere else (Very Else), Sans is mumbling. “sorry, bro. Wait a- hey, frisk...here, gimme that.”

A minute passes.

“yeah, call her right now. let her know i’m on my way.” Sans again.

“I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO _MAKE_ YOU BLUE,” Papyrus is saying at the same time. “EITHER OF YOU. AN INTERESTING COINCIDENCE, BUT...I STILL WILL ASK YOU. YOU DO NOT _WANT_ ME TO LET GO, DO YOU? IF IT’S WHAT YOU PREFER, I CAN-”

Of course you don’t want him to let go! As if you’d just give up now, after everything. You have a job to do, and it’s not like this is that much worse than what you already deal with! Or, maybe it is, but that doesn’t mean you can just stop trying. You won’t give up on yourself, even when it gets hard.

Of course you don’t want him to let go! It’s not like you don’t want to face the truth, just in your own time and in your own ways. You have people that you care about, and who care about you. People are depending on you, every day. You have to keep showing up...and she needs the money you’re sending.

Is that everyone?

Yes.

Good.

“OF COURSE,” Papyrus agrees almost quietly. For him, you’re realizing. Not much about Papyrus is quiet, but his voice is warm. His...voice?

“AS LONG AS YOU TRY, AS LONG AS YOU _WANT_ TO GET BETTER, YOU WILL. I HAVE NO DOUBTS ABOUT THIS. I KNOW THAT YOU’LL ALWAYS BE THERE FOR YOUR-”

The embarrassment doubles.

“SANS, YOU LAZYBONES!” he sounds a little desperate now. “WHAT IS TAKING YOU SO-”

He’s interrupted by a knock on the door.

“DON’T YOU DARE COME IN,” he cautions. “IT’S ALREADY BAD ENOUGH THAT _I’M_ IN HERE. NO PEEKING! YES, YES JUST….SET IT ON THE COUNTER. UGH, THAT’S... DISGUSTING. NO OFFENSE,” he says as an aside.

None taken. Not like it’s either of your faults.

“LOTS OF THINGS AREN’T _ANYONE’S_ FAULT,” Papyrus hollers compassionately.

“i know, bro, but..”

“NEVER MIND. WHERE’S FRISK?”

“went to their room. think they feel pretty bad.”

“YES, YES, EVERYONE FEELS VERY BAD, WHICH IS DEFINITELY THE ONLY _APPROPRIATE_ PART OF WHAT IS CURRENTLY HAPPENING.”

“look, bro. i checked their phone and it looks like they weren’t, uh, doing too well before this. vulkin’s in there, so I messaged her, about to go pick her up right now.”

“THEN HURRY,” Papyrus replies shortly, followed by a click or something, then silence.

Inexplicable relief floods you, more than you expected. But why wouldn’t you? After all, you’re obviously… sick…? and the doctor is coming. That’s a good reason to feel relieved, isn’t it?

“I AM SURE VULKIN WILL BE ABLE TO HELP YOU SOMEHOW,” Papyrus agrees heartily. “TRY NOT TO THINK ABOUT THIS.”

Think about...oh. Yes. You died, didn’t you? All your life crushed away under concrete and twisted metal, and you can’t even feel it. Would it be better if it hurt more? The twist of the knife, and off goes your head again. It’s okay, you’re sure they’ll do better next time. The glue that holds you together is slipping, the tiny bits that aren’t magic drying out, desiccating and flying into the air as the freezing wind takes you…

“HUMAN,” Papyrus says kindly. “I WOULD PREFER YOU DIDN’T LOOK AT THAT, PLEASE.”

But you don’t _know_ what you were looking at, it was just there. You can’t actually see anything, and you don’t know where you are. It’s scary, you’re scared, and you died and you’re dying and you don’t want to, you don’t want to die-

“YOU WON’T FALL,” Papyrus says easily, confidently. “I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S TAKING HIM SO LONG, MY BROTHER IS _EXTREMELY_ EFFICIENT. THAT’S ALSO WHY HE’S SO FRUSTRATINGLY LAZY, OF COURSE. DID I EVER TELL YOU ABOUT THE TIME HE-”

Another knock on the door interrupts him.

“CAN VULKIN COME IN?” Papyrus asks conscientiously.

Of course! Even if you don’t know what’s happening, she’s always been able to help you before. In fact, it’s like you already feel her calming presence around you, warmth that goes deeper than bones. Do you have bones? You seem to recall having something like that, even if you can’t feel them right now...can you usually feel them?

“Oh, oh, oh! Messy, messy.”

“NOW, THERE’S NO NEED TO BE RUDE TO MY GUEST, VULKIN. CAN YOU PUT IT BACK?”

Vulkin hums a thoughtful little tune.

“Mmm, mm. We tries! All back together now.”

Papyrus gives a long-suffering sigh. “I SUPPOSE I HAVE TWO MORE HANDS THAN YOU DO, EVEN IF THEY ARE OCCUPIED,” he grumbles, but he feels hopeful. Why do you know this?

“SANS!” he hollers. “GET THE CLEAN LAUNDRY AND BRING...SOMETHING. OF _COURSE_ I WASHED IT, I’M THE ONLY ONE WHO DOES ANYTHING AROUND HERE! IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT.”

Oh, you’re...it’s stretching again. It doesn’t feel good. You hadn’t realized how much it had stopped but now it’s starting again, oh god now it’s going the _other way_ , oh, it’s awful-

“THIS PART IS ALMOST OVER,” Papyrus assures you. And he’s right. He would never lie to you about that. Your hear something wet, something rusty in your ears, like...well, you don’t want to know. But yes, that is slightly better.

“Now we gots to hots!” You hear Vulkin say brightly. She always knows what to do.

“WELL, MAKE IT QUICK AS YOU CAN. NO MORE THAN 900, SINCE I CAN’T LET GO,” Papyrus says. “THE TUB CAN’T TAKE MUCH MORE, EITHER.”

“So lovey!” Vulkin coos, and hums again as warmth spreads through...something. It’s not nice, but it’s _very_ something.

You remember how to have bones at least, so that’s probably good.

“I...IF THE SMELL’S ANYTHING TO GO BY, I SUPPOSE IT IS WORKING,” You hear, then “YES, JUST PUSH THE BAG THROUGH THE GAP, SANS. YOU STAY OUT THERE.”

A rustling, and more heat.

“I HAVE TO LET GO IN A MOMENT, HUMAN. DON’T FORGET TO DO THE PART WHERE YOU REMEMBER TO FORGET THIS PART. I LOOK FORWARD TO MEETING YOU FINALLY, SO WE CAN TRULY FORGE OUR FRIENDSHIP!”

A low, surprised chuckle echoes from far away.

“THAT _WASN’T A PUN_ , SANS! THIS IS MAGMA, NOT METAL!”

The heat intensifies, and something is happening that doesn’t exactly hurt but it doesn’t exactly _not_ hurt, either.

“OKAY, HUMAN, YOU KNOW WHERE IT GOES. RIGHT BACK...”

And you’re alone.

You’re alone, and you’re laying on something hard, and you’ve never been so exhausted in your _life_. Someone’s tugging at you...no. They’re tugging clothes, moving your arms and legs. You summon more effort than you thought you were capable of, and your eyes flutter open just as the tugging stops.

“V-vulkin…?” you croak as your eyes try to focus on a familiar silhouette.

You’re in someone’s bathtub. Oh, god. What happened.

“What happened?” you whisper.

“YOU WERE... ILL,” a strange voice booms hesitantly from far above you. You try to focus your eyes again, but no...that’s really a skull. A moving, talking, living skull hovering over a garish red scarf or shawl or something. You have no idea what it is or how you got here, but Vulkin is here too, so you must have been… “VERY ILL,” the skull continues, and you realize the massive blur below it is actually the rest of his body. A skeleton. A very concerned-looking skeleton with shoulders at least half as wide as the tub you’re stretched out in.

Oh. It doesn’t occur to you to be frightened, but it’s not...wait, it’s reassuring? Why?

“Do I...know you?” you ask quietly after clearing your throat.

The skeleton grins weakly.

“WE HAVEN’T BEEN INTRODUCED! I AM THE GREAT PAPYRUS, BROTHER TO SANS AND CARETAKER OF FRISK, THE HUMAN AMBASSADOR OF MONSTERKIND. YOU’RE IN MY BATHTUB!” he adds cheerfully.

You’re glad he seems busy shoving a pair of large gloves on to his hands rather than trying to shake yours as you mumble your name, since you don’t think you can actually lift them at all. Your arms feel like overcooked pasta.

“Needs a snack,” Vulkin chimes, swaying back and forth happily.

Papyrus stops fiddling with his glove and shouts, “SANS! WHAT DO WE HAVE IN THE HOUSE?”

A mumble.

“STOP MUMBLING THROUGH THE DOOR, BROTHER, IT’S RUDE. WHERE ARE YOUR MANNERS!”

“oh, uh...” the door to the bathroom pushes open, and another, more familiar skull appears over Vulkin’s form, barely. “just the leftover spaghetti, bro. but do you think they can...”

“JUST PUT IT IN THE BLENDER, I’M SURE IT WILL BE JUST AS REFRESHING.”

Sans leaves and you look down at yourself. You’ve got a very soft, possibly threadbare white cotton shirt and a loose pair of very wide black shorts on. And you’re starting to piece together that for some reason you’d come over here, maybe there had been...a fight? Something? But then you’d fallen down, you’d gotten sick like you do sometimes except...it was like you had almost...

You’re feeling dizzy again, so you shut your eyes.

“Did I throw up or something?” you whisper.

“UM, YOU MEAN THAT THING THAT HAPPENS WHEN HUMANS VERY SUDDENLY AND DISGUSTINGLY EXPELL THE CONTENTS OF THEIR EXTREMELY FLESHY INTERNAL ORGANS? THE PART WITH ALL THE, UH...VOMIT? THAT?”

You groan.

“YES! YES, EXACTLY. THERE WAS, UH, VOMIT! IT WAS JUST... ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE. I’VE NEVER SEEN SO MUCH...” His voice drifts out of tune a little. “OF THAT. OF THE VOMIT.”

“Oh, god,” you say quietly. “I’m really sorry about all this.”

Feels like a catcher’s mitt comes down on your shoulder, and you squint up sheepishly.

“NONSENSE. NONE OF THIS IS YOUR FAULT. EVERYONE GETS...ILL, SOMETIMES, AND WE’RE ALL VERY GLAD YOU’RE GOING TO BE OKAY. YOU’RE OUR HOUSEGUEST, AFTER ALL!”

“Uh-” you start, but the next thing you know those mitts are under you, lifting you up. Very high up; you almost feel like you could touch the ceiling if your arms worked. If anything worked. You’re not small, but this skeleton is seriously huge, and he’s carrying you like a baby. You feel indescribably hollow, and also like if someone snipped a thread, you’d just float away. Just like a big, empty balloon.

“DON’T START THAT AGAIN,” Papyrus says quickly as he carries you across the threshold of the bathroom and down what might be a hallway. “SANS, WHERE’S THE _SPAGHETTI_?” he hollers, sounding more than a little stressed out.

“here, bro,” comes a deep voice from below you.

“WELL,” Papyrus “LET ME JUST GET THEM SETTLED DOWN, AND...” he lowers you onto something soft, and the space is quiet and dim. It would be nice if you weren’t so...whatever this is.

“had to put some ketchup in there. wouldn’t come back out of the blender. too solid.”

“I’M SURE IT’S FINE,” he replies, then you feel something thin and hard under your shoulders, lifting your upper body carefully.

“Where’s Vulkin?” you whisper as you try to help him sit you up and fail.

Sans comes into your field of vision, holding a large, clear plastic container full of something very red.

“took ‘er home,” he says quietly, but his eyes are small and bright, and he looks...afraid? You must have really made a mess, and you feel bad. “she says you gotta, uh, drink this and get some rest. ‘k?”

“Okay,” you agree quietly, and he holds the rim of the container to your lips. It’s actually just the entire blender, sans the motor it sits in, and there must be at least a liter of the stuff. Still, you open your mouth obediently as he tilts it up.

It’s cold as a dead fish, and somehow every flavor at once? Salty, sour, sweet and… yes, that’s bitter. And is that _smoke_ you taste when you exhale? It’s _unbelievably_ disgusting. Your hands come up, and Sans lets go as you tilt your head back and gulp it down. It’s monster food, you realize as you feel it dissolving each time you swallow. Feels like a swarm of sparks or fireflies gathering to fill the void that had opened inside you as soon as you woke up in the tub. Like it’s holding something together at last. You don’t want it to ever end, but of course it does eventually. The last chunky bits slide slowly down the container, revealing the metal parts at the bottom of the blender you’re holding almost vertically now.

“I DON’T THINK ANYONE HAS EVER ENJOYED MY SPAGHETTI SO...VISCERALLY.”

The blender drops heavily in your lap, and Sans manages to catch it before it falls out of your limp fingers.

“Thank you,” you cough, shaking a little in Papyrus’s grip. “It was the best thing I’ve ever had.” You sway, and your vision goes a little blurry.

“okay, let em down now, paps. they’re gonna pass out.”

You feel the massive mitts on your shoulders slowly guiding you back down into the mattress, and lead weights drag your eyes shut. You don’t immediately fall asleep though, and you hear Papyrus say something so quietly you don’t actually catch it. Apparently he is capable of whispering, who knew.

He must be leaning over you. Smells like bones. And...cologne? Well, it isn’t unpleasant.

“HUMAN,” he says, his breath tickling your ear. “THE-THE REMEMBERING? THAT IS OF COURSE YOUR BUSINESS, TO BE CONDUCTED ON YOUR OWN TIME. BUT...PERHAPS IT IS BEST TO...NO. NO, I WON’T ASK THAT OF YOU. SLEEP WELL, HUMAN. RECOVER.”

The air stirs, and you suppose he must have stood up.

“WELL, I SHOULD CERTAINLY SEE VULKIN, MAKE SURE SHE’S NOT TELLING TALL TALES OUTSIDE OF CLASS.”

It’s nonsense to you, and it’s the last thing you hear as you lose consciousness.

“I WOULDN’T WANT TO GET A REPUTATION.”


	3. green eggs and sans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Nina Simone - I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl](https://youtu.be/eSbxJMkI-tI)

***

Low droning, like bees. You can see a little light through your eyelids, but you don’t move. You’re not actually sure if you could if you tried, but it’s not scary. You’re not stuck, and you don’t need anything. You don’t have anywhere to be.

But there’s still that droning, and it keeps you from slipping back under the waters of impending slumber.

“s’ok, i’m tellin ya. just look.”

It’s almost a whisper. Someone else is breathing heavily.

“frisk. _they’re not dead_. they’re right here in pap’s bed.”

More breathing, shifting. The breath catches; someone is crying softly.

“ _i know_. but i’m tellin ya, paps did something to keep it together and vulkin fixed em. they’re just sleeping right now. everything’s back where it goes, look.”

The weeping intensifies, and you recognize it’s Frisk, now. Frisk and Sans.

“there. you didn’t kill anyone. see? nobody got killed. now I gotta go get their meds, are you gonna...”

The sounds move away, and you slip back under.

***

You wake up with a start in darkness, sweating heavily.

Oh, no. Where...where are you? Someone’s left a nightlight on near the baseboards of this room, which you vaguely remember from when you fell asleep.

Oh. Right.

Sans, Frisk, and Papyrus’s house. You’re not sure if it was the crushing-dream again (don’t think about it, don’t think about it) or...a low, droning noise you can barely hear that woke you up. Sounds far away.

Vulkin’s treatment and the monster drink you’d had before losing consciousness so abruptly must be the reason you don’t feel thirsty, nor do you have to pee. But at the same time, even though you’re tired, you don’t want to sleep. You’re afraid to, even though you just were.

You push your legs out and over the bedframe, and slowly get to your feet. You blink heavily as you stand up and look down at where you were just lying. A bulky plastic frame runs all the way around the perimeter of the mattress, and although it’s hard to tell in the dimness...you’re pretty sure it’s shaped like a race car? Like those specialty kids’ beds you’ve seen advertised. Just a lot bigger.

At least there’s a clear path to the door; in fact, this room’s incredibly tidy. Neat shelves line the walls, half filled with books, alternating with what you think might be figurines. There’s a massive painting centered on the opposite wall, although it’s far too dim to make it out very well. You can check it out in the morning. Your head feels very light, and it doesn’t ache, which is surprising.

You open the door and pad silently out into the upstairs hall, and realize what the barely-there sound you’ve been hearing is.

Someone is singing very, very quietly.

_i feel so funny, i feel so sad…_

As you creep forward, you get a glimpse over the top step of the stairwell at the couch in the family room. There’s a dim but present light on down there, and you realize you’re looking at Sans’s dirty slippers denting in the end of the couch. A pair of bare human feet are pressed to the back cushion beside them.

 _i want a little steam on my clothes…_  
_maybe i could fix things up so they’ll go…_

You slide very slowly down the wall and sit on the carpet.

Sans is laying on the broad couch, one arm tucked under his skull, the other holding what looks like a blocky monster phone perched up on his upraised patella. A wire runs out of one side of it (the bottom?) and splits into two; one earbud terminates in the curl of Frisk’s ear, who is hunched up in an almost fetal position, wedged between Sans and the couch. Their head rests in the center of his chest, but their narrow eyes are locked on the phone’s screen as they chew their left thumbnail fiercely; grimly. It contrasts with the impassive expression on their round face, lit intermittently in different colors by whatever’s happening on the screen. The other earbud is laying on the armrest of the couch next to Sans’s skull.

_what’s the matter daddy, come on save my sooooul…_

Sans is singing. There’s nothing professional or even practiced about it; the notes are a little flat. But whatever it is that makes you think you can almost feel his voice, sometimes... that’s so strong you feel your eyes prickle as he half-whispers a surprisingly poignant falsetto at the end.

Frisk’s chewed fingers dart out almost before the last note clears, and you hear a low snort.

“come on, kid. you’re getting spit all over my phone.”

Frisk gives their thumb a cursory wipe on the front of their sweatshirt, then their fingers shoot back to the screen to drag and tap insistently.

“nope.”

Frisk huffs.

“nope.”

A longer silence while Sans holds the phone steadily, the hem of his shorts pinned under the phone holding it in place, you assume so the slippery material doesn’t just slide right down his leg bones into his crotch. Actually, from this rather extreme angle, you can see the underside of Sans’ long white femur joining to other bones somewhere in the darkness inside his shorts. There’s nothing else in there, but you’re sure he wouldn’t want you to be looking, regardless. You turn quietly and face the opposite wall, just stare at that. But you don’t want to go to sleep yet. Your chest is burning again, hot and sick. Sad and afraid.

“heh. gimme a sec.”

That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter how old you get. You never stop needing your parents. You know you never have, and obviously it’s the same for Frisk. Sans might not be exactly analogous to a parent, but he’s someone who cares enough to do this, apparently. Someone who can be asked for something simple and profound without shame or obligation.

 _do you remember when we met_  
_that’s the day i knew you were my pet…_  
_...i wanna tell you how much i love you..._

 _  
_ You remember your mom teaching you to play guitar, how you hadn’t expected the strings to hurt so much when you pressed them down on the fretboard. She let you feel her fingertips, the thick calluses built up after years of playing and practicing. _Only you can decide if it’s worth it_ , she’d said. _I’m just showing you how._

You still have your guitar at your place, although you don’t play very often anymore because of the pain, the fatigue. Your feel your fingertips now, where they’ve lost the calluses that had taken so many months and blisters to build up. They’re just as soft and vulnerable as they had been before you first started learning, as if the thick skin protecting them had never existed at all.

You let the tears roll slow down your face while you stare at the wall, snatching up discarded bits of someone else’s lullaby.

***

You don’t remember falling back asleep, but you wake up back in the race car without recalling your dreams for the first time since the University tour.

You slide out of bed, a little surprised at how not-miserable you are. You make your way down the hall to the bathroom, a little relieved that it’s furnished with the sort of facilities you require. Then again, you’re not sure why you’d expected anything else; Frisk lives here too, after all. And surely they must at least occasionally indulge in human food. You’ve heard it’s necessary, or at least vitamins are. You sigh at your reflection while you wash your hands with a bar of creamy white soap that appears both handmade, and to have once been shaped like a skull. It smells pleasantly of bay leaves and something spicy.

Honestly, the whole house is full of cool shit. You wander back into the bedroom to take another look at the painting you’d noticed last night, now that it’s light out and you can finally see it. It’s kind of a masterpiece, you’re slowly realizing. It gives the effect of a stormy sea under roiling clouds, all blues, greys and greens with yellow-white luminescence seeming to glow throughout. But when you look closer, you can see it’s actually all bones. A sea of bones, waves and fans and whorls of patterns that end up looking almost...well, of course they’re _organic_ , but it’s hard to describe. It feels like the ocean, dangerous and soothing at the same time. You’ve been standing there quite some time when you realize even if you spent the night, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re invited to go poking around in someone’s bedroom; you’re not even sure whose it is.

You head downstairs a little unsteadily in your borrowed clothes, noticing Sans asleep in the same spot on the couch you last saw him, although there’s no evidence of Frisk. You step quietly past him into the dining room/kitchen area, noticing again the painting hanging on the wall behind the table. You gaze into it analytically as you find your bottle of water and medications in your bag on the table, dispensing and swallowing them as you ruminate.

The style reminds you a little of the old Dutch masters, but maybe that’s just because they painted a lot of bones in their time, too. However, nothing about this work is a reminder of mortality; it’s peaceful in a lively way. If the one on the bedroom is a seascape, this is a primordial forest. But a certain softness, the way the light seems to come from everywhere and nowhere in a soft, ethereal glow...that’s there, too. You hear a scuff behind you, and turn to see a very sleepy-looking Sans scratching his sternum idly.

“These all look like they’re by the same artist. Where’d you get them?”

“oh. paps made all these.”

Your jaw drops at that.

“Holy shit,” you say softly. “ _Wow._ ”

He comes a little closer, grin widening as he gazes at the painting with you.

“yeah. my bro’s the coolest.”

“How much does something like this go for? It’s not quite the one in the bedroom, but it’s still a masterpiece. I've never seen anything like this.”

Sans shrugs and wanders past you into the kitchen. “he doesn’t sell ‘em or anything like that. just makes ‘em. you should see the one he made for alphys n’ undyne’s wedding present, it’s the size of that wall.”

“Oh. Um, is he waking up soon, too? I hope I’m not making too much noise...”

Sans runs the tap for a moment, filling a countertop kettle and plugging it in to heat. It’s really interesting watching all the tiny bones in his hands perform mundane tasks, since there’s nothing visible really holding them together even though they’re obviously all of a piece. They’re not fused, nor are they separate. They just kind of _are_.

 _Magic_ , you think absently. _Fuckin bananas._

“he slept over at tori’s,” he replies, looking over his should at you as you settle yourself down into one of the chairs. “that’s his room you were in last night.”

You feel your face heat, and look down at the loose shorts and t-shirt you’re wearing.

“Hey, I’m really sorry. Like, _seriously_ sorry.”

“huh? for what?”

“I just plow into your house yelling incoherent demands, then collapse into a pile of steaming mess for you to deal with...you have to call for a doctor, apparently you go run errands to grab my meds...I kick your _brother_ out of his bed, out of his _house_ , and I’m pretty sure I’m wearing _your_ clothes. I’d say I’m imposing, but that doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

Sans leans back against the counter, his fixed grin flattened in thought for a long moment.

“ok, look. i could spend a lot of time right now explaining to you all the ways that none of that’s a problem, how this is just what monsters do for each other, and just how much of a big deal it _isn’t_ that you gave paps an excuse to have a sleepover with toriel and stuff himself with snail pie and oatmeal.”

He sighs and raises his hands again, fingers clacking gently as he signs into the suddenly pregnant silence.

“instead, i’m gonna say that i’m sorry all that went down, and i just acted like you weren’t even there, ‘cause i got too much of my own crap i’m dealing with. i shoulda checked back with you. i shoulda known some random human caught up in _that_ would be messed up over it, and i shoulda...”

He looks down, to the side. His grin flattens even more.

“i shoulda _cared_.”

You’re still trying to process that when he looks back up with a more normal expression on his face.

“you want some eggs?”

You blink. “You cook?”

“not really. you want eggs or not?”

“Sure,” you reply.

“k.”

He turns away and starts clattering in a cupboard, and you turn your attention back to your bag, tucking away your medicines but pulling out your phone. You check your messages and social media, not that there’s much interesting going on in either, and are considering sending a reassuring text to your sister. You’re doing your best to remember when the last time you talked with her was when you hear a wet crack and Sans says something sharp under his breath.

Looks like he dropped an egg on the floor, so you get up and look around the kitchen.

“I got it,” you say as you grab a roll of paper towels and stoop down (hips still going strong, you gotta start eating more monster food for real) to scoop it up. It looks...unusually large, for an egg. The sheen of the broken shell seems different, too, and it’s thicker than the shell of any chicken’s egg you’ve seen.

“Hey, Sans? Uh, what kind of egg is this?”

Sans is repeatedly stabbing into a very large red bowl with a utensil of some kind.

“uh, monster egg?” he replies, loudly and clearly since his hands are full.

“From...where?” you ask as you drop the mess into the trash can, then go to the sink to wet a towel to clean off the linoleum.

He makes deliberate eye contact and shrugs, then turns back to his ministrations.

You wash your hands thoroughly and go back to your chair, and in a few seconds you hear a hiss as the eggs hit the pan. It looks like he has a damn cauldron on there, and you hope he doesn’t expect _you_ to be entirely responsible for putting away that degree of eggitude. Your appetite hasn’t been the best lately, and even under usual circumstances you’re not usually one for a massive breakfast.

At one point you glance up at a soft curse word, and he’s unplugging the kettle before darting back very quickly to stir the eggs again. They’re done a lot faster than you were expecting, considering the volume, and before you know it he’s plopping down a fairly large bowl in front of you. He grabs his own bowl and reaches into the fridge, pulls out an intimidatingly large red bottle, then sits down perpendicular to you. The eggs just looks like regular scrambled eggs for the most part, although they might be a little more...shiny? Greenish? You’re not sure, but whatever.

“ketchup?” he offers, waving the bottle as if tempting you with a fine vintage. Little does he know.

You nod and take it, noticing the flip top has broken off at some point, leaving the small squeezy opening exposed and crusted in darker red. When you tip it over your bowl, the lid actually falls off entirely but you just dart your fingers in to pick it out right before it gets covered in the tomatoey flood, then keep on letting it flow. You set the cap down to grab your spoon (that’s the utensil Sans had given you), stir it up a bit in analysis, then squeeze just a little more, shaking it to loosen it up and just blorping it out. One more, and it’s basically soup. Perfect.

When you look up, Sans is staring at you oddly.

“Sorry, the cap just kinda fell off, but it’s not a total loss or anything. Did you want me to wash it?”

“uh… no. it’s fine.”

You hand him the bottle and scoop up some of the morass you’ve made. Huh. You’re about to say “not bad,” when your teeth hit an audibly crunchy bit.

“I think you got some shells in there,” you comment, then look at him again. He’s still just sitting there holding the bottle.

“But it’s good,” you continue gamely. “Especially with the ketchup.”

“yeah,” he replies absently, then picks up the screw cap and reattaches it before adding a comparable amount to his own bowl. Great minds think alike. You continue to shovel your egg slurry into your mouth; it’s still pleasantly warm, so either those eggs were really hot or his fridge isn’t very cold. Either way, the monster food is seriously hitting the spot and you drift into the mindless consumption zone easily.

You’re idly watching his hands again as they manipulate his spoon and hold the bowl steady under his chin. His arm bones are exposed since he’s wearing just the t shirt. You notice that although they seem a little dull in a few spots, they still have...something like a luster to them; they’re not really like the dead bones you’ve seen and worked with before. They still smell like bones, though, and the dull spots have a very good chance, in your humble opinion, of being plain ol dirt. You wonder if maybe he needs to like, clean them or something. Honestly, you’re getting a pretty complete impression of a clinically depressed skeleton.

You notice his hands and arms have stopped moving, and he’s set his bowl down, so you look up at his face. He’s watching you watch him with that searching gaze you’ve seen before, but you just shovel another bite into your mouth and chew. Gingerly, since you never know when a shell’s gonna appear. Whatever, you’re hungry.

“you got an eyeful last night, didn’tcha?” he asks dryly.

You take a minute to swallow your food and wonder how he knew you were listening to them, but it’s not like you were hiding, and you may have fallen asleep in the hallway. Actually, come to think of it. If Papyrus wasn’t home, does that mean Sans might have been the one who put you back in bed?

Wait, rewind. _E_ _ye_ ful, not earful.

Oh. Your face feels a little warm, but you answer honestly.

“Not on purpose. Once I noticed, I stopped looking.”

His expression turns ironic, but then it shifts to something...softer?

“huh. you actually _did_ stop, didn’t you?”

You’re a little offended. “I get that I’m awkward, but I’m not a _creep_. You were taking care of your kid, that makes it like ten million times grosser.”

You sigh and mindfully let your defensiveness go. The fact remains that you’re obviously bothering him somehow, so maybe you should take a little responsibility for that. You’re in his house, after all.

“I’m sorry for making you uncomfortable,” you add sincerely. “I’ll try to look at you less.”

You glance over at him, and something about his face looks...smug.

“nah, knock yourself out,” he grunts. “looking’s free, and so are the eggs.”

Ah. So, he’s just busting your balls at this point. It’s definitely making you feel less like you want to sink into the earth just for being here, though. You try to make your face look as exasperated as you feel, but he just chuckles in response.

You accept defeat and look back at the painting you’d been staring at earlier. “I was just thinking, the bones in your arms kinda remind me of those,” you indicate with a thrust of your chin. “Alive.”

His grin broadens even further.

“actually, they’re these,” he says, and when he holds up his hand he’s got a single smallish, pearlescent, and oddly nonspecific bone that practically hums with the vague magnetism you associate with magic-based energy.

“Who’s that from?” you say, a little perturbed.

His eye lights flicker.

“uh, from me?”

He sees your face and adds hurriedly, “not from my body, i mean like-”

He puts the bone on the table and another appears in his hand.

“Whoa,” you eloquently respond.

“eh. my bro’s are better. those are his up there. says he won’t paint pictures of himself because it’d be too sexy, and he’d never have any peace to finish more paintings because everyone would line up wanting to smooch ‘im. so he makes these, sets ‘em up and paints ‘em. says it reminds him of puzzles, fitting them together and making all those patterns.”

“They’re made out of magic, right?” You’ve finished your bowl and you feel like you could honestly go for seconds in a serious way. This is the lightest yet most satisfying breakfast you think you’ve ever had, which you ascribe to ingredients rather than technique.

“yup.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“shoot.”

“ _You’re_ made of magic, so you can also, uh, _do_ magic. Right?”

He nods.

“Do you do some kind of magic that makes Frisk able to hear you? Like with the song last night.”

He puts another spoonful of eggs between his teeth, which part just enough to allow it, and you notice he doesn’t seem like he’s chewing or anything like that. Well, it’s monster food that just sort of instantly dissolves once you swallow it, so you suppose it’s not actually necessary. You do it out of habit anyhow since it adds to your enjoyment, but you wonder if his fixed grin is capable of that much movement.

“it’s less of a magic thing, more like a soul thing,” he answers after a little while. He frowns. “kinda like using a different tone of voice. it just...makes sure you’re understood.”

“Can I have seconds?” you ask.

His pupils flicker at you. “go for it.”

When you return with the second bowl and finish ketchupifying it, you ask another question before tucking in.

“So, when you sing to them. It’s like a way for them to hear the music more than their, uh, regular amount of hearing?”

There’s still a bit left in his bowl but he looks like he’s finished. You’ll offer to take care of it if you get through your second serving, you decide.

“not to get philosophical so early, but i honestly don’t have a way to know that.”

Fair enough.

“Could you make it so _I_ can understand you?”

He looks to the side a little. “frisk actually said when we first met you that, uh, i shouldn’t do it without asking. you might understand more than you want to, basically what they said.”

You have a hard time conceptualizing what that means, so you think about it while finishing your second bowl of eggs.

“Like, would I be able to tell when you’re joking, and when you’re not?”

“no idea, bud.”

“Are you gonna finish those?”

His pupils flicker again, then he looks down at his bowl. You wish you knew what was so surprising to him about you, but it doesn’t seem like it makes him angry or defensive. He pushes the bowl toward you wordlessly, and you realize you _do_ wish you could understand him better on multiple counts.

“You have my permission,” you say after swallowing a mouthful of his cooling, ketchupy eggs. “The voice thing, I mean. If you want to.”

He exhales in amusement, leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. “it’s not really-well, whatever. okay.”  
“Are you doing it?”

“yup.”

“It doesn’t sound any different.”

“nope.”

“I thought it would sound different.”

He laughs again. “i thought i made enough eggs, but here we are.”

You blush a little, then deliberately lift your bowl, tilt your head back and use the spoon to shovel the rest of the lukewarm slurry down your pie hole, where it dissolves into your body. You feel almost energetic.

“There’s still some left in your cauldron,” you protest.

“heh. well, frisk’s gonna be waking up soon, so we’ll see.” he looks to the side again. “speakin a which, I wanted to say somethin before they do.” he shifts a little in his chair, still not looking at you. “i was gonna...offer some advice. you don’t have to listen. and even if you do, you’re not obligated to take it or anything.”

You shrug. “I could probably really use some. I’m like, ten kinds of fucked up right now.”

“eh,” he remarks, then looks back at you. “got a question.”

“Yeah?”

“you ever seen your soul?”

You blink. “Is this like a metaphysical thing? I don’t really, um...”

Another odd look from him makes you trail off.

“no. most humans can’t really take em out on their own, so you’d need help,” he elaborates. “anyone ever helped you with that?”

Your mouth falls open.

“It...comes _out_?” you squeak.

He sighs. “vulkin’s been treating you for a while now, right? seems pretty comfortable with you.”

You nod.

“she can help you with that, probably. you should ask. the problem you’re having is, those aren’t really...dreams. or memories, even. some of the stuff you’re dealing with right now, the past month.”

You look at him, wincing. “It’s really been a month?”

“yup.”

You sigh.

“let’s say your soul’s been skipping around in time. past month or so, your time’s been all over the place. stuff you can’t remember. but your soul can.” He sighs. “put it this way. say your soul saw somethin’ bad. but you can’t remember it because it never happened. does that make sense?”

“About as much as any of the rest of it does.”

He lets that pass. “well, souls are...different. they’re infinite, and not, uh, temporal in the same way we- eh, most of us are. your _soul_ is still the soul of someone that happened to, but it never happened, and the juxtaposition is making you pretty uncomfortable, right?”

That makes more sense than it should. Maybe there is something to the whole ‘being understood’ tone of voice, whatever it is. Or maybe all of this is just so weird, it doesn’t manage to pass the threshold for you anymore. Either way, you _are_ pretty damn uncomfortable, so you nod.

“Because I don’t, uh, match my soul anymore.”

“sure,” he allows, and you suppose it’s close enough. “taking a look for yourself might go a long way to reconciling that issue. an’ if it doesn’t freak you out too much, you can try touching it, see if you can get your balance back that way,” he elaborates.

Your eyes unfocus for a few minutes, chewing that (and your lip) over. You don’t think he’s bullshitting you. Souls apparently can come out of your body, and you can look at them...that doesn’t sound like a body part at all, does it? Body parts don’t usually come out so you can have a look at them. Well, not unless there’s something seriously wrong, and even then only under very controlled circumstances. And you can _touch them_? Physically? Touch your own soul? Your own self? What would that even look like? What would it _feel_ like…? It probably wouldn’t feel that scary if it’s just you, after all.

Maybe it would be... good?

You look back at Sans, who has layered amused patience onto his expression so thick you could chip it off with a chisel. He’s apparently been following whatever face journey you’ve just taken, and considering how insightful he is at reading expressions, you have no doubt he knows why this particular journey has ended somewhere that feels pretty purple.

“’s not like that, unless you decide you want it to be,” he comments dryly. “none of my business, either way.”

You frown at him a little, but you’re more overwhelmed by new ideas and concepts than embarrassed. Although the embarrassment is certainly present.

“It’s like, I don’t even know how much I don’t know about this stuff.”

“i know. s’why i’m not laughing at you or anything. i just think you should try it.”

You meet his eyes. “Is that what _you_ do? And it helps?”

He doesn’t answer, but the patience slowly drains out of his face, and what replaces it is the same crushing existential exhaustion you saw when he emerged from the dark space in the hallway of the BioMed building, what seems like years ago now. The deep grooves under his eye sockets seem darker, and you think of the dull spots smirching up his otherwise lustrous bones, the forgotten kettle of water cooling on the counter, his rumpled, stained clothes, and the fact that despite being practically neighbors, you’ve never seen him outside.

“Hey..” you start to say, then a loud thump that sounds like a body hitting the floor downstairs makes you spasm in surprise, accidentally flailing your dirty spoon onto the floor.

Sans’s pupils flicker, then he chuckles softly, exhaustion in his face being pushed aside by sincere amusement and fondness.

“don’t you worry,” he rumbles quietly. “i got friends. i got family, and between the kiddo and paps naggin me to dust, I don’t got much time to feel sorry for myself anymore.”

You might have objected to that, if it wasn’t for the fact that the slamming and crashing from downstairs hasn’t stopped, and is intensifying more than can be explained the fact that it is also getting closer. A stomping like an army, if an army was one person, culminates with the sudden appearance of a broad and extremely disheveled human at the top of the stairs leading the lower floor, clad only in a long button up pajama shirt. You start to gesture a greeting when you realize it’s Frisk, but Sans waves a bony hand at you dismissively.

“don’ even bother with that for at least another fifteen-twenty minutes,” he practically drawls.

As Frisk stomps closer, you realize their eyes don’t even appear to be open, and their hair is… calling it a haystack doesn’t really do it justice. Without stopping or opening their eyes, they snatch Sans’s former bowl and spoon off the table, stagger into the kitchen and mightily upend the remains of the presumably cold scrambled eggs into it. They bounce off the wall but don’t lose their balance as they carry their bounty around Sans to sit at the chair opposite yours, then simultaneously sit with a thump and methodically start spooning eggs into their mouth. You wince as they audibly crunch their way through their first mouthful with no reaction. No ketchup, either.

“impressive, isn’t it?” Sans remarks. He actually does sound proud.

“I...” you start. “Are they...awake?”

Sans looks a lot less tired than he did a minute ago. “in my s _cientific_ opinion? i dunno.”

He laughs, then, “oh, shit. forgot about the coffee, didn’t i?” He scrapes back his chair, and returns to the counter to plug the kettle back in.

This time, he drags a stepstool from between the counter and fridge so he can reach up and retrieve a french press and a bag from one of the upper cupboards. He turns to look over his shoulder from his perch. “you want some?”

“Desperately,” you admit.

“heh.”

You watch Frisk in fascination as they continue to make their way through what seems like twice as much food as you’d eaten without speaking or opening their eyes. They’re like a machine. Well, they shovel like one; they definitely smell more like crayons than lemons this morning, not metal and magic. Little bit like wood shavings and old hamburgers, too, either of which you wouldn’t be all the surprised to physically find in their rat’s nest of hair. You’re starting to wonder how these two manage when Papyrus isn’t home for more than a day.

You blink as a cup flashes past your face and plinks down in front of you, then watch Sans toddle back around to plop another mug, this one pink and covered in what appear to be mermaids, in front of still-semi-somnolent Frisk. He starts to sit, then pops back up and grabs a lidded container off the counter and snatches open the fridge to grab a carton of something, carelessly setting both on the table.

You pick up the carton and snort.

“Is it made with real Mettatons?”

He winks. It’s less distracting than it used to be.

“milked him myself this morning.”

“Oh, god,” you laugh helplessly, covering your eyes. “Do I want to know why it’s _warm_?”

“you pays your money, you takes your chances,” he grins.

You pour some into your cup, then liberally lace it with sugar. You pick your spoon off the floor behind you and use the butt end to give it a stir.

It’s actually really good coffee.

“This is really good coffee,” you say.

“eh, it’s just really good coffee,” he replies with a shrug.

Frisk’s spoon hits the table with a clank, and their eyes finally open. Well, barely. They grab their own mug and bring it to their mouth, turning it up as they slowly drain it in what seems to be one long guzzle. They set it back on the table next to their now-empty bowl with a satisfied sigh.

Their eyes finally light on you.

“Good morning,” they sign vaguely, then glance over at Sans. “When are you getting Papyrus? He wants to take them home in his car,” they add, indicating you.

“you two are wearing me down to the bone,” he groans as he gets to his feet again, making a show of it.

“Oh, you don’t have to-” you protest, but Sans is already shutting the door. A door that, as far as you know, doesn’t lead outside and may actually be the downstairs bathroom.

Frisk is getting up and heading toward the french press, which looks to have a few inches of oversteeped coffee left in it. They scratch one bare, hairy leg as they return with their prize, but after they set it down they bring their hands up.

“You let Sans do the voice on you?”

“Huh? Oh, uh, yeah. I figured it would be easier?”

They tilt their hand ambiguously.

“Hey, is it...really okay that i’m here?”

They tilt their head a little. “Of course it is.” They glance at the door. “Sans hasn’t been in this good a mood since,” their face falls a little, “before the tour.”

Your face feels a little fallen, too, and you both sit quietly to have mutually private emotions for a long minute.

“Look,” you start, then sigh. Frisk sips at their second coffee, giving you time. You sip at yours as well, then set it down.

“I really think you should go through with it.”

Frisk blinks at you. “With what?”

“Soul Studies. I think you have a lot to offer, and….we...well, maybe we need you more than you need us,” you rush out, “but I don’t think you should let what, uh, happened, affect your decision. To go to Ebott University. If you want to.”

Frisk drinks the rest of their coffee, then stares at the tabletop and scrubs their hand through their hair a few times, making the front stick up even more.

“I understand why Alphys and Asgore are worried about humans and magic,” they sign, surprising you. “Even though everything has gone a lot better than any of us dared hope,” they add thoughtfully. “After all, humans aren’t always good at coping with visible minorities,” they add, pointedly looking at their own brown-skinned arm, then your similarly complected elbows resting on the tabletop.

You quirk the corner of your mouth in tacit agreement, then reply, “I guess saving the entire world was just enough to prevent another genocide, then.”

“The Core,” they nod sagely. “The monsters were very upset by what humans have done to environment up here. In just a few more decades...” Their expression grows ambiguous, unreadable. “Offering to power the entire world through the Core to prevent further destruction was enough to buy our lives and freedom, but… I’m surprised it worked.”

You wonder why someone with so much more knowledge than most humans must have would doubt what the monsters had managed to prove a dozen times over. It had changed everything, on top of the lives their food and medicines have saved. They’d shown that although it might take some time to fully implement, their plan was more than possible. It would save everyone.

“Well, it’s worked so far, although the infrastructure...” you trail off as their expression closes even more. Like you’re missing the whole point of what they were trying to say.

“I’m sorry,” you gesture, not really sure why. “I’m not saying I understand exactly what you feel like about any of it,” you finish lamely.

“Mom doesn’t really get it either,” they reply, you assume to change the topic. You find yourself unusually interested to finally find out what’s been going on with Frisk’s sudden change of residence. “She tries, but she...” They frown a little. “She tries too much, sometimes.”

“Toriel, you mean?”

They give an affirmative, then smile broadly as they seem to sense your interest. “It’s not actually that dramatic,” they confess. “She and I aren’t fighting, not exactly. I just need some space to figure things out, and learn some things about... for myself. She’s not the best at giving space to people, especially not me.”

You wonder a little peevishly if Frisk has been taking perceptiveness lessons from Sans. This house is full of mind-readers and it’s knocking you off kilter. Well, whatever. You’ll just have find a way to cope with being understood for a change. You take a deep breath.

“I’ve already admitted I’m not exactly, uh, impartial. But it’s also true that learning and teaching, especially when they’re happening at the same time, is one of the best ways to figure things out for yourself, about yourself, or just to try and shift your perspective.”

You eyeball them a moment and decide to go out on a limb a little. “I might, um, actually join you.” They raise their eyebrows. “Sitting in on Soul Studies at some point, I mean. There’s too much I don’t know, and apparently I really _should_ know it.” You don’t want to tip into oversharing, but they look concerned anyway.

“Did Sans talk to you about your soul?”

You glance away. “Yes,” you reply shortly.

“You should take his advice,” they gesture emphatically. “Whatever it was. He won’t steer you wrong.” They narrow their eyes a little. “Unless he asks you to test drive a telescope.”

You’re bringing your index fingers up to your chest when you hear a voice you remember from yesterday ringing through the house.

“SANS! IT’S AFTER _TEN_ NOW, AND I’VE ALREADY HEARD THIS ONE-OH, WE’RE HOME. IS FRISK AWAKE YET? WHERE’S THE HUMAN?”

Frisk is grinning toward the stairs leading to the part of the upstairs you haven’t seen, so you stand up and turn around, wondering how the hell they’d gotten back here without you noticing. You hadn’t heard a car start up or anything when Sans left, either, even though the door to what you assume is the garage is adjacent to the dining room. You brush off the rather wider-than-long t shirt and loose black shorts you’re wearing, try to smooth your hair a little as Papyrus descends the stairs with a surprisingly light step. Sans, who had apparently changed back into his hoodie before he left, shuffles down at a leisurely pace behind him.

“HUMAN! YOU’RE LOOKING WELL! MUCH BETTER THAN YOU DID YESTERDAY WITH ALL OF THAT VOMIT IN YOUR LAP!” Papyrus’s dashing red shawl flutters as he takes his impossibly long strides towards you, grinning happily. He extends his arms and places his gloved hands on your shoulders, which doesn’t bother you as much as it normally would (and considering he’d been carrying you around for a good portion of the previous afternoon, you supposed he’d earned a little familiarity).

“HAVE YOU-”

His sparkling smile goes a little crooked as his eyesockets take in the devestation on the table behind you.

“I SEE YOU’VE HAD BREAKFAST,” he yells sadly. “ALTHOUGH YOU’VE BEEN GRIEVOUSLY DEPRIVED OF MY OWN GENIUS IN THE KITCHEN, I HOPE WHATEVER SANS MANAGED TO BURN FOR YOU WAS BRACING, AT LEAST!”

You’re about to reply when Sans pops up at Papyrus’s elbow.

“they got a high ketchup tolerance,” he smirks.

Papyrus drops your shoulders to wheel around and put his hands on his hips, and you manage (barely) to avoid being jostled by one of his elbows.

“SANS! HAVE YOU BEEN _PRANKING_ THE HUMAN WHO MERE HOURS AGO WAS ON DEATH’S DOORSTEP AS WELL AS OURS? I TRUSTED YOU TO NURSE THEM BACK TO HEALTH!”

“I feel a lot better, actually,” you reply. “Though I should, uh, probably go home myself now, I think. Let me just call a-”

“NONSENSE! I’LL BE DRIVING YOU HOME, SINCE I AM SURE YOU’VE BEEN PINING FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO AVAIL YOUR EYEBALLS OF THE VEHICLE INSPIRED BY THE VERY BED YOU RECOVERED IN LAST NIGHT! AS WELL AS A GOOD PORTION OF YESTERDAY!” Papyrus beams.

Sans smiles fondly, then his eye sockets squeeze shut as he presses a fist to his teeth. A yawn?

“i could stand a little recovery myself,” he mumbles. Despite the mumbling, you still understand what he says as he shuffles around the corner into the kitchen and out of sight.

“Oh, I was hoping I could-” you cut off as you realize he’s not in the kitchen after all. Did he sneak around you? You look around, and Frisk smiles at you blandly. “I was uh, hoping I could get your guys’ phone numbers in case-” you sign, but Frisk interrupts you.

“Don’t worry about it,” they sign lackadaisically.

“COME, HUMAN. THE OPEN ROAD AWAITS US!”

You give Frisk a hard look but begin putting your medicines back in your bag, then look around for anything you might have left.

“Oh! Um, where did my clothes and stuff end up? If you just have them in a bag I can take-”

Papyrus has trotted back around to stand near the table facing you, hand pressed to his star-print-t-shirt -clad sternum. “THEY WILL BE TAKEN CARE OF, FEAR NOT! THEY WILL BE RETURNED TO YOU CLEANED, POLISHED, COMBED, FUMIGATED, CAUTERIZED AND PRESSED BY ONE OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS MEMBERS OF THE PAPYRUS HOUSEHOLD!”

You open your mouth to object when Frisk signs quickly at you behind Papyrus’s back.

“You’ll just upset him if you argue.”

“Oh, I, uh...thank you very much, Papyrus. It’s very gracious of you.”

Papyrus manages to somehow turn a bit pink-faced, which is rather remarkable for a skeleton. “NYEH HEH. OF COURSE I AM. HEH. THE MOST GRACIOUS OF HOSTS.”

“I just, um...” you look down at your bare feet.

“I’ll get you something,” Frisk signs, and Papyrus turns around to catch the gist this time.

“FRISK IS THE SECOND MOST GRACIOUS OF HOSTS,” he adds magnanimously. “ALTHOUGH I WAS ENTIRELY PREPARED TO CARRY YOU TO AND FROM THE CAR DUE TO YOUR LACK OF FOOTWEAR TO COMPLETE MY GRACIOUS HOSTING FITNESS CHALLENGE.”

“I really...” you start to say, then wonder if insisting that you could have managed to navigate a few feet of sidewalk barefoot might be taken in the same vein as insisting on cleaning your own clothes, or having already eaten breakfast.

“…like your paintings,” you continue instead. “They’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before, definitely never painted anything like it myself! Wow!” you finish with increasing enthusiasm, as you remember how much you do in fact like them. Because they’re awesome.

Papyrus turns pinker than before. “YOU ALSO PAINT BONES?” he asks, not softly, but sounding a little wistful. “I DIDN’T KNOW HUMANS COULD DO THAT.”

“Oh, well. Not bones, but I paint, um, paintings. Are these acrylics? I thought so at first, but the way they have this glow to them, it’s almost like oils. I can usually tell right away, but with these, I can’t.”

Papyrus rubs his gloved fingers almost shyly against his very short denim cutoffs.

“I’M SURE THEY ARE OILS OR ACRYLICS, AS YOU SAY,” he replies ingenuously. “A FRIEND HELPS ME MIX THEM. IT’S...A HOBBY OF MINE.”

You go closer to the painting over the table. “You _make_ the _paint_?”

“...YES?”

You peer at the surface curiously. “What kind of pigments do you use?”

“THEY’RE BONES,” he replies, looking confused.

You turn around, both of you looking at each other in bafflement. You think a little harder about what _exactly_ he said, and remember the conversation you’d had with Sans earlier.

“Oh! The bones you _make_! You make the bones, and they...turn into paint?” You spin and look at the painting again. “They’re that color?”

He looks at you in consternation, but he doesn’t seem annoyed or upset by your questions. If fact, he’s still pink, which you’re starting to gather means that he’s pleased. You just appear to be having some sort of communication difficulty.

“HUMAN, I MUST MAKE A CONFESSION. NO ONE HAS EVER ASKED ME ABOUT THIS. I AM HAPPY TO...TALK ABOUT MY DESIGNS, BUT...”

You put your hands on either side of your face, an amazing idea coming to you suddenly. Papyrus’s mannerisms are apparently contagious.

“Papyrus.”

His smile falters, then steadies.

“YES?”

“Could I watch you work sometime? That way I could just see how it’s done, and you won’t have to explain? You can just show me? Is it okay to ask that?”

Papyrus puts his own hands to his face, mirroring you now.

“GASP!”

Frisk reappears at the stairs, a pair of plain black slides in hand.

“FRISK! WE’RE GOING TO MAKE ART TOGETHER! THEY WANT TO KNOW HOW I MAKE THE BONES!!”

Frisk looks impressed and gives an emphatic thumbs up as they walk the shoes over to you. You slide them on carefully; Frisk’s feet are a little bigger than yours, but they’ll stay on. You rummage a moment while Papyrus burbles at Frisk, but when you pull your phone out of your bag and open the contacts, there are already entries for ‘sans’, ‘paps’, and ‘the kid’.

“Ummm,” you say, then look up at Frisk, bewildered.

“If Sans wants you to have his number, you have it.”

“That’s kinda forward,” you comment irritably.

Frisk just huffs their weird laugh at you.

“WE’RE _FRIENDS_ NOW!” Papyrus cries. “AND ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS SHOW UP AND HAVE AN ARGUMENT WITH FRISK AND SANS THAT UPSET YOU SO MUCH YOU VOMITED ALL OVER YOURSELF AND THE FLOOR AND FELL ASLEEP FOR FIFTEEN HOURS! AREN’T YOU OVERJOYED?”

“Y-yes?”

“THEN IT’S TIME TO MEET MY CAR!” Papyrus grabs your hand, and you do your best to keep up with his stride while peering back at Frisk. They just give you another thumbs up, then makes it a double before Hurricane Papyrus blows you through the door you presumed was the garage.

It is, in fact, the garage.

He lets you go and hits the lights in time for you to avoid tripping over the threshold, and you see the much-anticipated car. It’s a red convertible, and although you don’t really know much about cars and half the time can’t tell them apart, it doesn’t look like anything too souped up or expensive.

“It’s beautiful,” you say as he turns around and poses proudly.

“I KNOW! YOU CAN SIT IN THE FRONT,” he replies, and you walk around the back, the slides on your feet slapping at your heels. You have to adjust the passenger seat a little to give your legs enough room and sit the bag down in front of you. The cobwebby garage door cronkles open as Papyrus retrieves a pair of sunglasses from somewhere, sets them on his face where they somehow stay despite the general dearth of ears and noses, and starts the car with a flourish.

“THE OPEN ROAD IS CALLING OUR NAMES,” he gushes as the convertible trundles along at about 20 miles per hour on the residential streets lined with a combination of private homes, staff housing and dorms as you make your very pragmatic way towards and then through the college grounds. You’re grateful it’s somewhere north of 60 degrees since it’s quite breezy, and your borrowed clothes are a little on the thin side. “BUT NOT OUR ADDRESSES, SO, WHERE DO YOU LIVE?”

You tell him, then remark that his car is almost as comfortable as his bed, although the car is shinier.

“Thank you for taking me home,” you add, then, unable to restrain yourself, “I’m _really_ sorry for all the trouble. And the vomit.”

“IT’S THE LEAST WE CAN DO,” he replies, his teeth remaining parted after he finishes speaking. It’s hard to read his expression with the sunglasses on, but he sounds kind of sad, maybe? You’re not sure, but he stays quiet for the remaining four minutes it takes to arrive at your place. You may not know him well but it’s the longest he’s stopped talking in your presence since he entered it.

“WOWIE, WE’RE ALREADY HERE. I THINK THIS MIGHT BE A ROAD TRIP RECORD!”

You look over at your low apartment building, thinking about the implications of Papyrus’s penultimate comment as the engine idles, but you don’t get out yet.

You look over at him and reach out because he seems like a very tactile dude, then hesitate because you’re not sure what kind of touch he might find reassuring. His limbs and midriff are completely covered in some kind of leotard, despite the slightly revealing crop top and shorts he’s wearing. You pat the top of his gloved hand, figuring he’s already grabbed _your_ hand a few times. And carried you around. You’re practically cuddle pals at this point.

“Papyrus, you didn’t do anything you need to make up for. You’ve done nothing but _help_ me since we met.”

“SIGH.” He removes his sunglasses and turns to you, his eye sockets impossibly dark in the thin sunlight. He doesn’t even have the little spots of light (or maybe just white?) that his brother does, but they’re still very expressive. Especially the small ridges above them that function almost like eyebrows.

“SANS DOES NOT TAKE HIS RESPONSIBILITIES VERY SERIOUSLY, SOMETIMES.” Then he actually sighs instead of just saying sigh. “AND BY SOMETIMES I MEAN NEVER. I AM AWARE OF THIS, AND TRY TO MAKE UP FOR IT WHEN I CAN.”

“But, Papyrus, your brother isn’t-”

“WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR FRISK,” he intones.

“But, Frisk is an adult, and-”

“WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR FRISK.”

You can’t look away from those dark sockets, and you swallow slowly. Right before you start to feel afraid, Papyrus turns his hand over where it rests on his, pats it with his other hand, then breaks the tension without actually looking away from you.

“WILL YOU SEE VULKIN SOON?”

Oh. That thing again.

“Um, we have our usual appointment in two days.”

He nods and returns your hand, then leans over to push the car door open on your side. Wow, his arms are _really_ long. You take the hint and step out of the vehicle, shouldering your bag and shutting the door firmly.

“ONE OF US WILL COME WITH YOUR CLOTHING, RETURNED TO PRISTINE CONDITION, AND SOME MONSTER FOOD TO BOLSTER YOUR CONSTITUTION.”

“Um, when-”

“CALL ME SOON, FRIEND!! TEXT ME ANYTIIIIIIME!” Papyrus hollers as he revvs the engine and zooms away at approximately 20 miles per hour, arm still upraised and waving. You watch him coast to the stop sign and see his turn signal blink for the full four seconds of his complete stop before he turns the deserted corner and disappears very responsibly down the road.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frisk's Universal Playlist For Sad Single Dads In Your Area:
> 
>  **heh:** I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl (Nine Simone); Sea of Love (Phil Phillips and & The Twilights); Bring It On Home To Me (Sam Cooke); Love Train (The O'Jays); Easy (Commodores); Have You Seen Her (The Chi-Lites); Save the Last Dance For Me (The Drifters); Cupid (Sam Cooke)  
>  **nope:** Living for the City (Stevie Wonder); The Tracks of My Tears (Smokey Robinson & The Miracles); Will You Love Me Tomorrow (The Shirelles); Higher (Jackie Wilson); I'm Your Puppet (James & Bobby Purify); I'd Rather Go Blind (Etta James); Unchained Melody (The Righteous Brothers); Only You (The Platters)


	4. a moment of soulitude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Sharon Van Etten - Every Time The Sun Comes Up](https://youtu.be/fDW-W2J84Hc)

Maybe agreeing to take the time off work was a mistake.

The water in your electric kettle has been boiling for a few seconds now, and you jump when it clicks to indicate shutoff. Every five minutes you find yourself lost in thought, just staring at a wall and forgetting what you’re doing...well, more than usual. Thinking stuff like _it’s only been two days off work and you’re already jumping at appliances?_ Or inversely, _it’s been two whole days and you’re not better yet?_

You take a deep breath and try to remember how to be a little more fair to yourself. And also to put the teabag in your cup, yeesh. It’s a good thing you decided against an afternoon cup of coffee or you’d be a complete wreck right now.

There’s a tap at the door and you jump again.

Oh.

Vulkin’s here, and you’re going to ask her about The Thing. Apparently, you’re nervous.

She waddles in just like she always does, as if nothing happened recently like you busting into a peaceful monster family’s house and puking it up all over the place, even if you don’t really...remember….well, whatever.

She greets you and strolls on her four stubby legs to your usual spot. You sit down across from where she’s standing, and hold out your hands to her heat. There’s always something so encouraging about it. You think about how one time your sister had asked you how you can tell it’s the same Vulkin who comes to visit you every time, and you’d just sort of opened and shut your mouth at her like a fish. Although it had never occurred to you that different Vulkins could have been coming, there was still no doubt in your mind that it _was_ her, every time. You just couldn’t explain why.

It’s actually easier for you to tell monsters apart than it is people a lot of the time. You’re kind of faceblind. It’s a thing. It’s hard to feel bad in any way while Vulkin is treating you with her warmth, but you wince a little at the memory of the time you’d had a very confusing conversation with a strange lady in the post office for over ten minutes before you’d realized it was your coworker. But monsters? Much easier. It’s the same way you can tell which Moldbygg is Chell from the bursar, and which one works in the cafeteria. You just... _can_. Hmm. Maybe it’s pheromones or something. Magic spores?

Well, Vulkin probably doesn’t have spores… it must be something else. But there’s no doubt in your mind that the monster in front of you had also been there during your episode at Sans and Papyrus’s house. Your body aches and fatigue are fading down to the levels you associate with a completed treatment, so you decide to broach the topic that had made you so jumpy earlier.

“Hey, Vulkin?”

“Mmmm,” she hums.

“I’m having another kind of problem, right? More than usual?”

“All back together for now,” she replies cryptically.

“Uh...” you mumble. It’s not that it’s hard to communicate with her, more that you have to do a little more of the heavy lifting yourself. “Um, so. The people whose house I was at the other day were telling me I should ask you about something. To do with my...soul?”

“Ah...” Vulkin sighs musically. “Hugs?”

You blink, putting something together. Hadn’t she said something about that during the past bleary, blended-together weeks? Offering hugs, and something else about…

“You smell the... pain?” you try, hoping you have the phrasing right.

“Mmm,” she hums. It’s the one that means she agrees with something.

“Okay.” you sigh, trying to brace yourself for whatever the hell this is going to be. You promised yourself you weren’t going to keep ignoring this, even though it vaguely pisses you off that you have a whole nother self to have stuff going wrong with. Maybe this is like monster therapy or something. And it’s been made embarrassingly clear to you that you need it.

You stand up from the couch, but only so you can crouch down in front of the monster, who’s about half your height.

“Do I just...hug you?” You ask.

“Mmm,” Vulkin replies blithely, and toddles forward.

You wrap your arms around Vulkin, ready to flinch but the fire magic she’s surrounded by (made of?) just pours through you harmlessly. It doesn’t actually feel all that different...until she pulls back.

Oh. Oh.

Something tugs gently at you, through you, from somewhere other than your body. It's much more profound than you were expecting. You’d say it was visceral but this feeling doesn’t involve any...viscera. Everything’s still where it’s supposed to be, except now you’re somehow existing in two places at once.

You open your eyes, and your field of vision is utterly dominated by a dark blue heart shape floating in front of you. Except. It’s also….you. You can’t look away from it.

“Um...” you say in a strangled whisper.

“Bye now,” Vulkin giggles.

“Wait!” you say, not moving an inch. “Um...what do I...how do I put it back?”

“Knows where it goes!” Vulkin adds, sounding like she’s almost at the door.

You open your mouth to protest, then

_OKAY, HUMAN, YOU KNOW WHERE IT GOES. RIGHT BACK..._

Huh. You guess you do, for some reason. The door clicks shut.

It’s just you.

The light, or whatever it is, from your soul is steady and all-encompassing. For a second, being apart like this frightens you deeply because it’s reminding you of something you _really don’t like_ , but you don’t remember it and it’s not like you can see it or anything. More like it’s a….smell? A pain smell. You smell the pain. Oh.

But the steady, soothing blue of your soul makes that pain smell seem… not smaller, just more potentially finite. It has a beginning and an end. More manageable. After all, it’s over there, and you’re over here (there?); maybe it’s something you can examine and evaluate instead of something you just helplessly have to _be_.

That’s actually helpful. Huh. It doesn’t make this any less weird, but it does provide something like a goal.

You try to find the edges of it, but there really doesn’t seem to be anything like that. Maybe it’s _not_ finite. More that it’s...a smaller infinite quantity. That’s not the sort of idea you usually have truck with, but it fits into place for whatever this is.

Part of you is aware that you’re sitting back on your couch now, staring intently at a floating blue heart shape in front of your chest, your hand cupped protectively underneath. But the vast majority of your attention is on trying to come up with concepts and words for what you’re currently experiencing. It should be much more frightening than it is, but you have to admit you were more afraid the time you lost all that weight in college when you couldn’t afford decent food and the stress was literally killing you, and you noticed for the first time just how much your body had changed. What overexertion might be doing to you. It had been a humbling wake up call.

But right now?

The less-infinite infinity being separated from, even though it is also encompassed by, the more-infinite infinity is an _imbalance_. Not like it had been; the breach has been triaged at the very least. But the problem here is that at some point, that lesser infinity had….impossibly, it had _ended_. A paradox.

Ah. You begin to see the problem.

But when you think to look closer, something in you shies away from it. Okay. Okay. Not too much, now. But you get a faint gist of an idea floating toward you...that something had happened, but it also had _not_ happened. Something had been possible, and then, abruptly, it had ended in annihilation. There. The problem reveals itself.

You shake. Is this really something you can handle? This problem, this impossibility, might be bigger than you are. Whatever had happened, it had not been in your control. What’s to stop if from happening again? What if this just keeps splitting and tearing and shattering….

But the steady blue of your soul calms you, reminds you that you don’t have to do everything all at once. That even if you’re afraid, you don’t have to be. More than that, it draws you with its own curiosity and initiative. You want to _know_. Who are you in the face of something like this? Part of you watches your hand curl inward.

The moment the tips of your fingers brush the surface of your soul is something you’ll never forget.

It really is….it’s still _you_. You already have what you need to deal with this; both the problem and the solution are contained within you, an infinity curved back in on itself and perfectly capable of moving through, and persisting outside of, time and space. And that’s what you need: time and space. To heal.

It’s gonna be okay.

You’re not sure when you started sobbing, but it feels too good to stop. It’s okay to be the way you are, you don’t have to set up tests for yourself and wait to see if you pass. You know for a fact that you’re doing your best, no matter what that looks like on a given day, because you _always do_. You really don’t give yourself enough credit. People can rely on you because you follow through, even when no one is watching. Even when you have to try over and over, or if you have to give up and do it some other way. Even if it takes years. Because it matters to you. It’s as if someone you respect and admire is finally noticing how great you are, except somehow, that person is _also you_. It’s the most validating experience of your life, and you don’t want it to stop.

Then eventually, is just sort of _is_ time to stop, and that’s okay, too.

You cup your hand and draw it back towards your chest. Back where it belongs, and then you can move freely again.

Um.

Theoretically.

Uh oh.

You’re….unexpectedly drained. And very, very thirsty. Your first attempt at standing makes you stagger, but you keep your feet and manage to pour a glass of water and chug it. You pour a second to sip slowly and toddle weakly back to the couch. You hadn’t anticipated this part...but then you notice the shadows are getting pretty long, and the light’s dimming, too. That had taken….hours. Shit.

You blow your nose repeatedly, then wet a paper towel and try to scrub the traces of weeping off of your face. It feels puffy. Is this normal? Are you supposed to be this tired? Should you even be alone right now?

Unusually for you, you can’t bring yourself to dismiss or suppress the knowledge that you need help, and that it’s really, truly okay to ask. Maybe touching your soul does that to people. Your bag’s on the coffee table, and you rummage inside it until you find your phone. You open the contacts, scroll down. ‘the kid’? No way, Frisk’s a lot younger than you are and already seems to have plenty on their plate. Papyrus? You have a feeling he might need a little time and space of his own, after...something? Sure. He’s already helped you a lot, you feel like.

Welp, that leaves one more person who had already reached out and given you this advice. You suppose you’ll see if it’s true that he won’t steer you wrong, and seems the least likely to be busy right now. You pull up a new message option for ‘sans.’

**you** : Hey, so I was just wondering. Is it normal to be this tired afterward? Because I’m a little worried.

A few minutes pass, and you wonder if you should clarify. Hopefully he remembers you and that whole… what are you thinking, of course he does. Your unexpected stint as his houseguest definitely qualified as an ordeal, after all. A debacle, even.

**sans** : yeah maybe. be right there.

Um. What? You blink at the message, making sure it says what you think it does.

**you** : oh, hey, you don’t have to come all the way over here! Just, if you have some advice for self care?

There’s no response after almost ten minutes, and you start to feel a little sheepish. You hadn’t meant to make him feel obligated or anything, but although your….body? or something feels awfully noodly right now, it’s harder to bullshit yourself into feeling like a burden than usual. Wow. That whole soul touching thing really is something to write home about. You blush faintly, but you can’t even manage to drum up self-consciousness. Still, maybe you should-

“knock knock,” you hear just as you’re picking your phone back up.

“Oh! Uh, come in! It’s not locked,” you call weakly. You hope you’re telling the truth, though you definitely don’t remember locking it.

The door opens, and sans walks through as you try and tilt your head up to greet him properly. Looks like there’s a two heavy plastic grocery bags looped around his forearm, although both his hands are firmly tucked in his hoodie pockets.

“you didn’t even ask ‘who’s there,’” he grins at you cheekily as he walks around to the front of the couch to look at you. He’s not signing, but you understand him anyhow so he must be doing the voice thing.

You sigh exasperatedly. “Somehow, I already know better. Um, I was saying, you didn’t have to come all the way over here, I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do afterward and it seems like I should? Do something? I feel pretty wrung out and I’m not totally sure why.”

He shrugs, and one of the bags bops off his shin. He’s still got his slippers on, you notice, ignoring the neat row of shoes right inside your door. Well, maybe he doesn’t have context for that sort of thing, and besides, they _are_ technically house shoes. These ones look less dirty than the ones you’d seen him in before; they’re also a rather fetching shade of pale bubblegum pink.

“brought some ‘dogs,” he says casually. “you probably just need somethin to eat. figured you weren’t up to a trip to the store, either.”

Your frown thoughtfully. “I don’t feel especially hungry.”

His eye lights dart over you speculatively. “do you feel especially not-hungry?”

You open your mouth, but nothing comes out.

He tilts his head toward the kitchen. “you got a microwave?”

“Yes?”

He turns and shuffles off. A minute later, you hear the aforementioned appliance start its insistent hum. Um. You usually would prepare hot dogs (wait...that’s what he said he brought, right?) by heating them in water on the stove, so they don’t-

A loud, wet pop sounds from the kitchen, and you sigh. Well, if you have to clean the microwave of exploded hot dog shrapnel later, it’s worth it not to have to get up right now. It’s actually kind of touching, if you’re honest. Seems like he’s really going the extra mile for you, proportionate to the amount of effort it seems customary for him to expend.

You’ve got your TV turned on to some kind of low-demand nature documentary when Sans returns to the living room. He glances over at it as he comes to sit next to you, carrying one of your larger platters. He’s created a sort of pyramid made of assembled hot dogs in buns on top of it, and he sets it on the coffee table. There must be at least fifteen ‘dogs; the sheer amount is a little daunting.

As Sans settles himself, he pulls a large bottle of ketchup out of his hoodie pocket. You blink; there must be whole universes going on in that sweatshirt of his.

He pulls one off the pile, holds the ketchup bottle over it, mumbles, “say when,” and starts squeezing. You wait a bit, then “okay, that’s good.” He keeps going. “uh...” The hot dog in the center of the bun is disappearing.

“Oh! WHEN,” you chuckle. He winks and hands you the sloppy bun. You hold it up, examining it carefully, and a big drip lands right in the middle of your chest.

“You’re kind of the worst, aren’t you?” you comment absently, watching a family of pelicans on the TV fight over something. Sans is already decorating another dog.

“nah, but this is,” he replies.

Okay, well. Geez. You hadn’t meant to give him _that_ hard a time.

“Hey, sorry. I really appreciate you coming over, I was just jo-”

He looks over at you sharply, confused. He looks at the table and points to the food. Then he sets down the ketchup bottle and his bare phalanges click at you.

W-U-R-S-T.

You gape at him. Then, your whole body rocks with laughter, you can’t help it, and another giant blob of effluvia from the food you're still just holding there above you messes up your shirt even more. It’s gonna be a total loss at this point, but you’re used to collateral damage.

“you’re almost as much of an artist as paps,” he tells your shirt dryly. He shoves a dog between his teeth somehow, then it disappears and he juts his chin at you. “you gonna eat that?”

You try to finish your wheezing, then bring it up for a bite. Huh. The texture’s kind of...you don’t know, but it’s not as salty as the kind of hot dogs you’ve usually had. The second your teeth close on it, though, you realize you’re absolutely ravenous. Almost painfully so. Two more bites, and it’s gone.

You grab the ketchup bottle yourself and start squirting. “What kind of hot dogs are these?”

Sans is waiting for you to relinquish the bottle, and just shrugs impassively. “monster ‘dog.”

Well, you’d rather eat than interrogate. So you do. Before you know it, there’s only two dogs left on the platter.

“Split the difference?” you suggest, watching the pelicans swooping down to the surface of the ocean for fish.

“nah, you go ahead,” he grins. Then he nods at the TV. “you look like that guy.”

One of the pelicans tilts its head back, fish wriggling obscenely down its throat as it pumps its gullet. You snort.

“Living the dream,” you say with exaggerated wistfulness. He gives a low chuckle as you quickly vanish the last of the food he’s brought.

You sigh deeply with satisfaction. You’re still completely wrung out, but that precarious feeling from before is gone. You feel grounded. Also...filthy.

“Hate to ask, but could you do me a favor?”

“shoot,” he replies.

You lean forward weakly and raise your hand up and over the back of your neck, and pull laboriously until your shirt comes off over your front. “Could you just run to the basket by the laundry, um, back by the kitchen. Grab me another shirt? I think this masterpiece is complete,” you comment wryly, using your soiled garment to dab off the places it’s smeared and soaked through. You wipe your face with it, too.

“no prob,” he replies, then heaves himself up off the couch. You dab one of the cleaner parts into your half-empty glass of water and use it to wipe the last stickiness away, and he’s back with the t-shirt by the time you’re done. You toss the soiled one into the basket you keep here for exactly these circumstances, and pull the new one over your head with a sigh.

Sans sits back down with a sigh that mirrors yours.

“wonder if it’d make paps complain less if I used one of those,” he says idly, glancing at the basket.

You exhale in amusement. “I just do what works for me. It’s not for everyone I guess.” You’re starting to feel a little sleepy, but it’s not urgent. After all that, just relaxing here feels very good. You’re not even in much physical pain; Vulkin’s treatment had done its magic. It’s like you’re resting after having done some kind of exercise or exerted yourself somehow, but...hmm. You’ve felt a little like this before, haven’t you? Speaking of which…

“Was I hallucinating, or did I really drink a blender of cold spaghetti at your house?”

He’s laughing.

“nah, that definitely happened. you seemed pretty into it, though. my brother was impressed.”

“How’s he doing, anyhow?”

“eh. he’ll be fine.”

Well, that’s less than reassuring. You glance surreptitiously at Sans’s face for clues, but there’s not much help there. He kinda looks halfway to a nap, himself. Those impossibly dark sockets are low ovals, but the points are still following whatever the birds are doing on the screen. As your silence extends, he looks over at you and his eyes open a little more.

“oh, hey. nothing big, he just feels bad about your clothes. they didn’t exactly survive when he tried to clean ‘em.” Sans glances at the basket your dirty shirt has been consigned to. “but i figure maybe you’re not as broken up over it as he is.”

You grin a little sheepishly. “I might have already forgotten about that. But you can let him know it’s fine, really.”

“heh. yeah, i will. though I gotta warn you, now he’s saying he’s gonna do one of his paintings for ya, to make up for it. so you can expect him to show up at some point. probably gonna want your input there. says you already asked to see how it happens, so... but don’t worry too much. you got other stuff on your mind, he knows that.” He glances over again, a little less certain. “so, uh. how’d it go?”

You appreciate the open-endedness of the question, although you know exactly what he means by it. You take a deep breath and let it out slowly, considering.

“Frisk was right about you, I think.”

His eye lights flicker sharply. “’bout what?”

“They said you give good advice. That you never steered them wrong.”

He looks surprised, and like he doesn’t exactly know what to do with that information. It makes you smile, because it reminds you of how you felt when you took your sister’s kid Nattie out shopping, and they assured a cashier that you know _literally_ _everything_ , so they didn’t have to send someone in the back for a price check.

“Is there always that much crying?” you add, with an exaggerated whine for levity although you’re not exactly kidding. Your face is still sore and puffy.

“heh,” he laughs, but empathy is heavy in his voice. “not always. not _usually_ , i should say. you come out of it with a better grip?”

The mirth drains out of you.

“I know Frisk made something that happened, unhappen.” Sans’s eyes dim, and his grin flattens. “There’s a lot of stuff in there I’m not ready to deal with, but I thought you should know that...that I know. And,” you sigh again. “I figure whatever happened when I got...sick...is worse than a little puke. But I guess I need some time. To, uh.”

“hey, you don’t gotta explain yourself to me,” Sans says kindly. “nothin to explain. i’m just...” A bony hand emerges from his pocket and rasps over the top of his skull softly before returning to its nest. He pushes his arms down, and manages to slump even more until he looks like he’s laying on the middle of his spine on the couch, legs extended out in from of him. Even so, only a few inches of white tibia and fibula are visible between his socks and shorts. It’s not like his clothes are all that huge, he’s just really short.

“i dunno. it’s just, you’re messed up because of us, and now we wanna make sure you get as un-messed-up as you can. we’ll keep bringing snacks over, cause obviously you need it.”

“I appreciate it,” you say. “What do I owe you?”

“huh?”

“For the food,” you answer. “If you want to grab my-”

He’s waving his hand at you. “no, no. nothin like that. let us know if there’s anything you want in particular, or i’ll just bring whatever. no problem.”

“Sans,” you say seriously. “I understand that you feel responsible to some degree for what happened, even though I really do not get it at all. But that doesn’t mean you’re responsible for my grocery bills indefinitely because of it. That’s ridiculous.”

He just looks at you for a long time, with an incredibly sad look on his face. Then he slumps back, and you both watch TV for a little while. Now the pelicans are having babies or whatever. They’re coming out of eggs. You wonder if those monster eggs Sans had cooked for you were from pelicans or something. They definitely weren’t chicken eggs.

“guess I forget sometimes. frisk was right, i don’t spend much time with humans.”

You look at him sidelong. “What’s that mean?”

He sighs. “forget you all expect people to pay for food or just...die. pay for water, sunlight...breathing. whatever. s’depressing.”

That annoys you a little. “Well, it’s not like I have a choice. And this job pays a lot better than any I've had. And Vulkin doesn’t ask for anything, she just does it because she likes to feel like she’s helping. And she _is_ , so...” you sigh. “It makes me angry, too. It’s better here than it is some places, but also worse I guess. But I mean, it’s not like monsters don’t have money,” you add. “You pay for food too, right?”

He gives you a look. “that’s not the same. and...you know i can’t talk about the other thing.”

You hold up your hands placatingly, acknowledging monsterkind’s decision not to share exactly where their food comes from. A lot of things they’d had to keep pretty tight, and you understand why. It doesn’t take much more than walking out of the house every day to understand why monsters might keep those sorts of secrets, considering how many humans would be just as glad to rip their resources away given less than half a chance. Still, it’s not as bad as it used to be, before.

“y’know encounters, right?” he says after a minute. You nod.

“a lotta monsters used to use those as an excuse to take a moment, check up on people. maybe give em a little change so they could pick up a nice treat, give em somethin’ to look forward to. make sure they...still had hope, back underground. before it was UnderEbott. makes all the difference sometime, just knowing someone gives a shit.” He sighs. “money’s for givin people. it's extra.”

You sit for a few more minutes silently before responding.

“Yeah, not for us. Not right now, anyways." The words weigh on you. "I always send my sister a little something every month. You know. For the kids. Glad I have so much paid time left, cause I’d hate to be short right now. The holidays, and all.” You exhale slowly, thinking about all the times you’d wished you could have helped her out with the doctor bills and shit, back when you’d been in college yourself.

Your niece Shonda had just been born, then, and she didn’t know what the fuck to do. Your mother’d only been gone two years, and you’d both struggled mightily. Even then, you’d tried to send her a little of what you could, even some of your student loan money so the baby could have some new clothes once in a while. You’re still not sure how you’d both managed to survive, but at least you could make sure they didn’t go without anything now. Even if it put a burr up her husband Matt’s ass sometimes.

You hoped the monsters’ generosity could somehow be spread, or more...you hope they keep undermining, giving, and doing what they do best, which in your humble opinion, is help people. Not that they were all one way or the other; plenty of the monsters you’d met had been petty, or unpleasant, or outright dickheads. Some were sweet, and some were a little stuck up. Just, you know, people.

But that’s the thing. You’d never seen a monster interact with anyone, human or fellow monster, that came off as if they saw them as _not a person_. The same look you’d seen in hundreds of human eyes when they’d fallen on you, you’d never seen that from a monster. In the private quiet of your heart-or, wait. Your soul?  You guess it is. You know you’d walk through fire to stand by monsters, if it came down to it, just for that one simple reason, although there are others, too. They’d never take your personhood away, just for needing help. Just for being different than they are.

“You can bring the food,” you say quietly. “Sorry I made a big deal about it.”

It’s been dark out for a while, and the TV’s the only light on in the living room. Sans is looking mighty soft when you glance over.

“your, uh, sister? she live around here?”

You snort. “She’s married.”

He gives you an incredulous look.

“Sorry,” you reply with a grin. “I’m just kidding. Really.” You explain the situation to him briefly, then find yourself talking about how much you think about them, and how hard it had been to leave them to come here, although it had been worth it. You even talk a little about how much you believe in Ebott University, and why it’s important to you. 

“You think Frisk will still come?” you ask. “I mean, they can actually come in at any time. It’s not like other colleges where you miss a deadline, you’re out of luck, you know? Plus, the circumstances.”

He shrugs. “think they’re considering it.”

You nod.

He smiles (or rather, does the thing where his mouth changes shape slightly that indicate he’s smiling more than usual), but doesn’t add any further commentary. The show about the pelicans end, and the next thing in the queue is already starting. Looks like another animal doc, this one about beetles, it seems like.

“so, you need me to take off or anything?” Sans inquires idly.

“You can stay as long as you want,” you answer, and you find you really mean it. You’re not sure if it’s the lingering self confidence from touching your soul, or maybe it’s just something about him being the least uptight person you can remember spending time with. You blink, considering how rare it is to feel like nothing you’re doing is bothering someone else. Vulkin makes you feel the same way, actually, and it’s just another of the many reasons you appreciate her so much. You don’t have any tension worrying that he’s going to give you a weird look about your living room laundry basket or- “...as long as you don’t mind if I fall asleep here,” you add belatedly. “I really don’t plan to move for the rest of the night whether you stay or not, I mean.”

“heh. i like your priorities.”

“Good deal. You want to turn on something else or are you good with this?” You nod at the TV.

“nah, this is great. no matter how much of everything I see up here, there’s always...more. s’interesting.”

When you wake up 12 hours later, the TV is off and he’s gone. Your coffee table is covered in ketchup splats, the platter, glasses of water, two empty ketchup bottles and a mummified hot dog bun, but the throw blanket you keep folded under the side table has been pulled over you.

It’s nice.

 


	5. encounter? i barely know 'er!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [The Pretenders - Brass In Pocket](https://youtu.be/-7Hy7uAb_eU)

You decide to use the rest of your time off to go and visit your sister and her family. You don’t usually make impulsive travel decisions, but considering what you’ve been through...rather, once you have the chance to consider you _have in fact_ been through something, it just reminds you of what’s really important. It takes hours on the bus, and it’s not comfortable. Enough so that even though you’ve already made this trip several times, it unsettles you. Whatever, you’re going. It’ll be fine.

Besides, it’s only five days. You’ll be fine for five days.

The first day, you do your best to tell her everything. It’s hard, partly since for some reason you tend to keep up a more stoic front with her in person. It’s odd the ways that distance between you has actually brought you closer over the past slightly-more-than-a-year since you moved, at least when it comes to sharing and communicating. Maybe a little room to not have to depend on each other so much makes the difference.

But you can’t quite bring yourself to tell her about a whole new medical problem you apparently have. It just seems like an overwhelming prospect. At the same time, you don’t want to keep things from her, not when she’s already been so worried. So instead, you just say that the stress and shock from the incident -someone coming to try and cause murder and mayhem at your workplace, and the chaotic manner in which it had been resolved- had exacerbated many of your physical and neurological symptoms. You tell her you’ve been doing special treatments with Vulkin, but you don’t explain the soul thing. You don’t know why. It’s silly. Maybe it’ll be easier to talk about when you’re back in Ebott.

She does seem interested in the fact that you're interacting in a personal capacity with the family in the house across campus, especially considering one of them is Frisk Dreamurr. You explain that they felt bad that their presence could have possibly prompted the attack, and you add something vague about them bringing you fruit baskets and wishing you well in your recovery.

“What is Frisk like? Super slick and professional like how some child stars are when they grow up? Or just like, total trainwreck?” she asks, leaning forward and biting a fingernail, then remembering she’s trying to stop and putting her hand back on the table. It creeps back between her teeth as you answer her, explaining Frisk’s odd composure for their age, their presence of mind in a crisis, and a little bit about Sans and Papyrus.

“Huh,” she says quietly. “I don’t think I’ve really heard of monsters that look like skeletons. Are they like, rare or something?”

You have no idea.

The second day, you go out for lunch after the kids get dropped off at school, and the server calls you “sir”. You flinch. That sort of thing doesn’t often happen in Ebott, not that you actually get out much...but there’s a difference. So many unarguably genderless or otherwise ambiguous monsters live there. Everyone adjusts as some point, and after over a decade, most of the humans in Ebott had. Apparently you have too, even after only a year. The incident sours your mood for the rest of the day, and when your sister hands you a cup of tea that evening, you find yourself scrubbing away an angry tear.

“Hey,” she asks softly. “You okay?”

“Apparently not,” you gesture sulkily.

“Look, if you-”

The door opens with a loud clatter. Ah. Matt’s home. Fantastic.

“Hey, sweetie,” she says, smiling. “How was your day?”

In the end, he spends long enough griping about stuff you can’t quite catch, and doesn’t pause long enough for you to ask him to repeat himself, that you give up and head upstairs. You’re staying in Shonda’s room, and the kids are bunking up together. It’s fine, but a lot of the time it’s a little loud, especially in the afternoons and early evenings. You can feel pain radiating through you from the tense way you’ve been holding your body since you got here. Maybe this was a less than stellar idea after all. Your vision gets suspiciously shiny and you realize a migraine is coming on.

You rummage in your bag for the stronger pain meds you carry in case of, well. This. You swallow them, and feel bitter about it. You fall asleep at 7pm, sleep through until noon and wake up with a headache anyway, although it’s not bad enough to make you throw up or pass out.

On the third day, you decide to go home early, and your sister just hugs you gently and tells you to call when you get there.

You forget.

***

As you trudge back up to your front door after another grueling bus ride, you stop dead as your eyes finally focus through the haze of pain on a cloth bag of some kind dangling from your doorknob. Your heart pounds for a long minute, wondering what the hell you’re going to have to deal with now. You just want a long hot bath, another round of meds and a fucking dirt nap at the end, for all you care.

With that last thought, you figure if you’re going to get blown up by a doorknob bomb, at least you went out with a bang. _G_ _ood one_ , you think sourly. As you shuffle closer, your heavy backpack feeling like it’s going to pull your shoulder out of its socket and your elbow screaming as you drag your suitcase behind you, you see that there’s some kind of note stuck to the front. You peer at it. Looks like it’s handwritten in formal-looking, slightly spidery capital letters.

DEAR HUMAN,

I SEE YOU’VE FOUND MY GIFT! YOU MUST BE DELIGHTED, DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE GREAT PAPYRUS HIMSELF IS NOT HERE TO-!

Okay, of course it’s from Papyrus. You have to smile a little, wondering if he even remembers your name, or if it’s just some sort of affectation he has. At this point, you’re starting to suspect the latter. Whatever, you have a much better appreciation for eccentric people than people who have a problem with eccentrics.

-WITNESS YOUR UNPARALLELED ECSTASY AT BEING ITS RECIPIENT! THESE ARE FOR YOU! FRISK SAYS THAT THESE ARE THEIR FAVORITE WHEN THEY AREN’T FEELING WELL! THEY’RE VERY GOOD FOR HUMANS! WHICH YOU ARE!

PLEASE ALLOW ME TO-

Okay, you’ll read the rest, and process exclamation points having lost their meaning, once you get inside and settled down. It’s more of a letter than a note, you consider. The paper’s got multiple folds in it two paragraphs past where you stopped reading.

You take the bag off and unlock the door, managing to bash your hand painfully on it as you flail for the light switch. You drop everything else and stumble to the dining room table with the idea of inspecting whatever kind of food this is, but once you get there, you find yourself immediately sinking down into one of the chairs.

You feel absolutely dreadful. It’s like something sharp has been jammed into most of your joints, and your head’s full of impenetrable pain fog. You wish the extra sleep you’d gotten at your sister’s had bolstered you, but instead you feel like the sleep had actually taken energy from you. You feel stretched thin...almost literally. It reminds you of something...it’s not good. Not good at all. Maybe you should try and eat something. But…

You open the bag. It’s full of some kind of bread things? A spicy smell hits you when you open one. They’re cinnamon buns, but shaped into more of an oval, with an extra bit. Hatchmarks left before baking on the extra bit form two triangles, suggesting the head of an animal. It smells good, and you want to eat it, but…

How long had they been hanging on your door?

You groan with disappointment and pull out your phone. The number for “paps” is still there, and you blearily bring up the message form.

You: Hey I got yuor GIft. Just curious wHEn ou left it? How long dot things stay good for

 Well, whatever. It’s already sent, anyways, and you’re feeling worse every second. You really hope he answers quickly, and- Oh. oh, crap. You finally notice the time in the corner of the screen and groan again listlessly. It’s almost 2 o clock in the morning. You’re officially the biggest asshole on earth.

Your phone buzzes.

 paps: YOU’RE BACK! AS I SAID IN MY NOTE, WHICH YOU OBVIOUSLY WOULD HAVE READ IN FULL BEFORE TEXTING ME, I’LL BE RIGHT OVER TO EXPLAIN THE DETAILS!! I ALSO HAVE SOME HELPFUL ADVICE ON SPELLING AND PUNCTUATION!

 He also types in caps and exclamation points, apparently.

Well, shit. You are absolutely not in any shape or mood for visitors. Especially not one that wants to explain details to you of literally anything; Papyrus is nothing if not detail-oriented. And in your opinion, a bit high maintenance. You’ve met him, so you don’t even bother sending another text telling him not to come. You don’t have the energy, and it certainly hadn’t stopped Sans...and he’s really no match for his brother when it comes to sheer persistence and ignoring things he doesn’t want to hear. Although now you’re starting to feel poorly enough that you’re almost relieved you won’t be here alone. Uh oh. That’s extra not-good.

You bring up another contact and this time send a text to Vulkin. You groan again when the automated response pops up immediately, meaning she’s not available. Well, no wonder, since it’s the middle of the night, but the idea of having to actually go and DO anything to take care of yourself is an even worse prospect than how you already feel.

Why does it always have to be like this for you? Why can’t you just go _do_ things every once in a while without something like this happening? It feels like your whole life has just been running between collapses, trying to get somewhere safe so you can fall over. Everyone else can just take a trip, or go shopping, or even just go to work regularly without feeling cored like an apple after a few days, or sometimes even just a few hours.

The vast majority of your life is spent in recovery from the very small amount of time you spend actually living it. Your eyes burn dryly. It’s not fair. You’ve laid your head down on the arm you’ve folded on the table and closed your eyes. You’re such a piece of crap, even people who barely know you are spending all their time trying to scrape you up off the floor, then scraping the mess you make off _their_ floor.

You’re the worst person ever. The biggest asshole on earth. Maybe it would be better if you just-

A knock sounds on the door. You whine in despair, trying to heave yourself up, but sharp pains lance through your body and that pulling, almost tearing feeling happens again. You yelp, and instead of gaining your feet, you fall on the floor with a weak groan. Ow. Shit, shit, shit.

Next thing you know, something massive is blocking the light as it hovers over you.

“WHAT ON EARTH HAVE YOU BEEN DOING TO YOURSELF, HUMAN?! DIDN’T YOU TAKE SANS’S ADVICE? I _THOUGHT_ I WAS VERY- WELL, THAT DOESN’T MATTER NOW. UP YOU GO!”

Papyrus’s enormous yet surprisingly gentle gloved hands scoop you up under your armpits and deposit you back into your thankfully cushioned chair. You blink and try to focus your eyes as he pulls out a second chair and sits primly across from you.

“YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME YOU WEREN’T FEELING WELL! ARE YOU NOT ABLE TO EAT THE CINNAMON BUNNIES? TOO MUCH CHEWING? SANS COMPLAINS ABOUT THAT ALL THE-”

You sway in your chair, and he cuts off.

“LUCKILY FOR YOU THE GREAT PAPYRUS ALWAYS COMES PREPARED WITH GUESTING GIFTS FOR A FELLOW GRACIOUS HOST,” he says hurriedly as he pulls something put of a bag you hadn’t noticed before. He sets a plastic cup with a dome on it on the table in front of you, then plucks a straw from somewhere and shoves it through the hole the top.

You blink at it for a few long seconds, then pull it toward you with shaking hands. The first sip is so breathtakingly sweet, you almost choke...except you can’t because once you swallow, it dissolves gently into your body. Oh. That’s...good. That’s _very_ good. You pick up the cup now that the straw’s already in your mouth and you’re less at risk of poking your own eye out. After the fifth or sixth gulp, your hands’ trembling stills.

Papyrus is eyeing you carefully, and you finally notice what he’s wearing as you suck down the sweet...milkshake? Smoothie? You’re not sure about that, but you are sure that Papyrus either has or is some kind of clothing designer, because wow.

He’s wearing one of those shirts that are like loose turtleneck sweaters except sleeveless and also a crop top, which would have exposed his shoulders and a fair amount of his ribcage if he hadn’t been wearing that dark bodysuit thing underneath. The cowl is pretty massive, and covers his neckbones completely in dark red cableknit. Some care has been taken on the front, where PAPYRUS has been written in sparkling white rhinestones edged with gold, and he’s wearing what appear to be white hot pants with gold buttons over his narrow hipbones.

His gloves and boots, which reach his elbows and knees respectively although they flare out almost conelike instead of fitting closely, look like white patent leather or plastic but don’t make any of the creaking noises you’d usually associate with the type of material. The real kicker is the thigh-high...leg warmers? that appear to be made of the same dark red cableknit of his top, slouched like the collar but almost reaching to the hems of his tiny shorts. It’d look odd if it weren’t for the fact that his bones are thicker and seem to be much sturdier than human bones. The more you see him, the less he seems like anything human, if you’re honest. Can a skeleton be ripped? Either way, the ensemble is quite flattering.

The straw starts making the noise that means you’ve somehow drained the plastic cup already, so you set it down carefully.

“That is the best outfit I’ve ever seen in my life,” you croak weakly.

Papyrus turns pink and fiddles with his collar.

“NYEH HEH HEH,” he giggles shyly, then his sockets sharpen and his posture stiffens. “YOU’RE WELCOME! HOWEVER! YOUR JUSTIFIED COMPLIMENTS WON’T DISTRACT ME FROM YOUR DEGENERATING CONDITION! DO YOU REQUIRE A HUMAN DOCTOR?” He leans forward empathetically.

You put your face in your hands, lean your elbows on the table. The last thing on earth you want right now is a trip to the emergency room; in fact you’d find it preferable to just die quietly on your floor than get in a car, or even worse, an ambulance. Unfortunately, you’re well aware that this extreme aversion is actually very damning evidence that you DO need exactly that, or at least it’d be a good idea. The more you need a doctor, the less you want to see one. You do your best to shove the curse of self-awareness back into whatever hole it comes from, although your conscience twinges as you do.

“No, I...” you start, then sigh. “Actually, I just, uh, need my meds. If it’s not too much trouble, would you mind getting my bag for me? I dropped it by the door, I think.”

He’s already up and taking his impossibly long strides around the corner. You hear a shuffling, then he’s on his way back with bottles in his hands instead of just bringing your bag, but whatever. It’s his choice if he wants to rummage through your dirty clothes and dig them out, you guess.

He examines the orange bottles closely as he returns.

“THESE WILL RECALIBRATE YOUR BODY?” he asks, sounding bemused by the idea. “WHERE DO THEY GO?”

You take the bottles from his oddly non-squeaky gloves and try to process his commentary. At least you don’t have too much trouble understanding him, partly because he moves his jaw in predictable patterns when he makes certain sounds, and partly because he’s just so loud and...formal, without being professional, like at all? An accent? Something.

“Well, no,” you say as you open the bottles laboriously. “They help, though. Most of the time.”

Papyrus looks a little confused, but sits back down.

You take out a double dose of pain meds, the strong ones, and pop the dome off the top of the drink he’d given you to wash the meds down with the last of it. This time, you _do_ choke because you forgot about the part where it dissolves and the pills obviously don’t. It’s bad. Ugh. You bruised your goddamn esophagus again.

Papyrus looks a little perturbed, but visibly braces himself.

“SO, DO YOU FEEL BETTER NOW?”

“Oh, um,” you clear your throat, trying to make it feel less like the pills are still stuck in your craw somewhere. You’re seriously not thinking too clearly; apparently the monster drink hadn’t done you as much good as others have in the past. You still feel really off kilter. It sucks.

“No, they...take time to work. They’re not like monster stuff where it just happens immediately. They have to dissolve in my stomach, and then...” you trail off, forgetting the point of what you were saying.

“IT’S NOT LIKE WHEN THOSE ALIEN MICROBES CAME TO LIVE INSIDE FRISK, IS IT?” Papyrus looks increasingly horrified. “TORIEL SAID THEY HAD TO SWALLOW ORBS FOR TWO WEEKS TO MAKE THEM LEAVE. GUESTS SHOULD NEVER OVERSTAY THEIR WELCOME, IT’S VERY RUDE!” he finishes, looking incredibly offended.

Um. Okay, wow.

“No, they just take maybe an hour?” You rub your face, then your chest, oddly enough. It’s like you feel faint or something, or maybe just...disconnected somehow? Like at any moment you’ll just break off and float away. Ugh. You really wish Vulkin was here.

Papyrus, despite not having pupils or anything else decorating his impossibly dark sockets, manages to unfocus them. Then he comes back, and meets your eyes sharply.

“I MIGHT BE ABLE TO HELP. UNTIL THE HUMAN THINGS WORK.”

You blink at him dazedly. “Huh?”

“IT’S LIKE A HUG, ONLY IT TAKES LONGER. JUST LIKE THE ORBS!”

So obviously what you associate with a monster offering hugs shows on your face, because he draws back suddenly and stiffens.

“I REALIZE I AM VERY SEXY, BUT I HAVE THE UTMOST FAITH IN YOU TO CONTROL YOUR URGES, HUMAN!” he hollers, sounding somehow more like he sympathizes with your weakness in his presence than an actual reprimand. His face definitely radiates concern.

“AND AS SOMEONE WHOSE GRACIOUS HOSTING IS ONLY PARALLELED BY MY OWN HOUSEHOLD’S, I AM SURE YOU ARE IMMUNE TO MISINTERPRETING THE MOST PLATONIC OF SKELETAL EMBRACES. _SKELE_ -PLA- _TON_ -IC. NYEH HEH... HEH.” It’s the closest to awkward you’ve seen him look. “HEH?”

And with that, he just stands up, leans over, and picks you up like a bag of groceries.

“I DID THIS FOR FRISK WHEN THE ALIENS INVADED,” he adds while you goggle up at his bony chin weakly. Again, you’re not small. This is not a thing that happens to you very often. He shifts you a little, so gently it doesn’t even jog the broken glass your joints feel like they’re filled with. It seems like he must do this sort of thing all the time. Which is disconcerting, to say the least. Now he’s pulling cinnamon bunnies out of the bag on the table and piling them on your midsection like you’re some kind of gift basket, and you’re off to the living room.

“WE CAN WATCH MY FAVORITE SHOW WHILE WE WAIT! CAN YOU GUESS WHAT IT IS? IT’S METTATON! VERY DELIGHTFUL.”

“Um...” you say weakly, trying to figure out a way to protest being hauled around like a sack of potatoes, but it seems that your first impression had left its mark and now you’re doomed to be swept off your feet by a seven foot tall skeleton for the foreseeable future. Oh, looks like he’s got your remote, and...yep, that’s the theme song for _It’s Mettaton!_ playing as you plop down...or, well, are plopped down, but very carefully. Good lord.

The talk and variety show, hosted by the monster who either is also or just looks like a robot, sometimes a rectangle and sometimes an extremely overwrought android, isn’t necessarily your favorite, but. Well. Papyrus is your guest, and you suppose it’s only polite. He _is_ holding you very gently, after all. And for some reason, it’s extremely soothing to be held, despite your misgivings, but...

Papyrus seems enthralled by whatever’s going on on the screen, colors from the TV playing over the matte whiteness of his grinning face like a projector screen. Unlike his brother, his jaw moves easily and often as his expression changes, you assume based on whatever he’s listening to from the television. Your head isn’t even facing toward it, but you really don’t care. The robot’s voice is unintelligible to you without captions, just sounds vaguely like chiptunes or something.

You try to clear your head and calm down, and you realize you are starting to feel something. It’s like...humming? No. Maybe more like...it’s almost like how you feel when Vulkin’s treating you. The usual way, not her...hugs. You shudder a little, but not in disgust or anything like that. It makes you want to groan in frustration. You know three fucking languages, and none of them can describe half the shit you’ve gone through since Frisk and their weird relatives almost got you killed.

You blink sheepishly, recognizing your thought as extraordinarily unfair. You’d just been doing your job, they’d just been on the tour _you’d_ suggested yourself, and what happened hadn’t been anyone’s fault other than whatever piece of shit decided one day to do some violence. Humans did that all the time, after all. Just wake up one day and kill people, destroy things. They don’t have to. They could decide to do something else with their time and energy. But that’s a choice they make on their own, and then try foist onto others.

“Hey, Papyrus?” you ask quietly.

“YES?” he replies, not looking away from the screen or changing his amused expression.

“You shouldn’t pick people up without asking.”

He gives a long, aggrieved sigh, becoming pensive even as his sockets remain fixed on the program.

“SOMETIMES THESE THINGS ARE DIFFICULT TO NAVIGATE, YES,” he says obliquely, almost absently. “AFTER ALL, NO ONE LIKES TO BE OVERT WITH UNREASONABLE DEMANDS OR ENCROACH ON THE POLITE NATURES OF OTHERS. NO MATTER HOW MUCH THEY WANT TO HELP OR HOW OFTEN THEY EXPLAIN IT’S NOT A NOTICEABLE AMOUNT OF ENERGY EXPENDITURE.” Now he looks irritable, and also vaguely..hurt?

“IT’S ALL VERY FRUSTRATING, ESPECIALLY WHEN EVERY ATTEMPT IS MET WITH SOME KIND OF DEFLECTION, SUSPICIOUS DISAPPEARANCES, OR UNFORGIVABLY TERRIBLE JOKES. EVEN WHEN HE _KNOWS_ HE NEEDS IT, HE WON’T EVER _ASK_ , IT’S _ALWAYS_ SOME KIND OF-UGH! I SWEAR, SOMETIMES I ALMOST THINK HE DOESN’T _WANT_ TO GET BET-”

Papyrus’s teeth hang open silently for a long second, then shut with a click.

“NEVER MIND,” he adds cheerfully. “I DIDN’T SAY ANY OF THAT.”

He tilts his face down at you. “YOU REALLY SHOULD TRY TO EAT THOSE, THEY WEREN’T MEANT ONLY TO BE DECORATIVE.”

You glance down, belatedly remembering you have a pile of food on your chest. It _is_ rather fetchingly arranged. You take one off the top and unwrap it, the smell making your mouth water a little to combat the dryness that tells you the medication will start working fairly soon. Theoretically. You hope.

You chew thoughtfully for a little while, considering what Papyrus had(n’t?) said. You can’t really help it, although you’ll try to do him the favor of not mentioning it. Seems like this is something Papyrus does often, or maybe just regularly? And from the sound of it, apparently this is something he does for his brother as well as Frisk, so it works on monsters, too. Maybe even other family members? Toriel? That would be funny. And your meds are definitely kicking in now, you consider as you pop open your third bunny. Between those and the nice vibes you’re catching from good ol Papyrus’s cuddle (ha! You _are_ cuddle pals now! You should go into fortune telling!), okay, yeah. Maybe you’re a little high. Whatever. Worth it. Much improved.

“Heyyy,” you drawl. “hey.”

“YES?” the enormous and outlandish skeleton cradling you gently answers, seeming unfazed by conversing while absorbing his favorite programs. Sounds like he might’ve changed it, but...nope, still chiptunes. Maybe another Mettaton show? Movie?

“What’s this called?”

“OH, THIS IS METTATON’S TWO-PART HAWAII SPECIAL. THE WINDSURFING IS ALL GREEN SCREEN, OF COURSE, BUT-”

“No, I meant, uh-” you wiggle a little, pat his gloved hand where it rests on your arm. You’re basically sideways in his lap somehow with one of his arms under your knees, but also kind of leaned on his chest, and you’re not entirely sure how it could possibly be comfortable but it is anyways. Like a hard hammock. “-this. What’s this called?”

He looks down at you at that.

“NYEH?”

You sigh in frustration, blink slowly. “Like, if your brother ever _did_ actually ask, what would he be asking for?”

Papyrus smiles down at you in gentle understanding, eye sockets flattening at the bottom. “AH, I SEE THE HUMAN DRUGS HAVE KICKED IN QUITE EFFECTIVELY, SINCE YOU’RE SPEAKING NONSENSE! GLAD TO SEE THEY ARE WORKING.” He looks back up at the TV, appearing quite ready to be entertained.

Oops. “If I wanted to do this, or...ask you...what would I say? What’s it called?”

He looks a little nonplussed. “UM...HEALING, MAYBE?” He looks down at you again. “LET’S GO WITH THAT.”

“Why do you want to help me so much?” you ask quietly, sincerely.

“OH, THAT’S BECAUSE I’M THE MOM FRIEND,” he tosses off like it’s _not_ the funniest thing you’ve ever heard in your fucking life. And of course, you go straight to crying with laughter because yeah.

“Wh-what?” you choke, relieved the pills have taken care of the lingering esophageal discomfort they’d caused in the first place. At least it balances out, you consider as you wipe ineffectively at your tears. “The _mom friend_??”

“EXACTLY,” he says, almost absently. He seems like he’s having fun. That’s nice. “FRISK GAVE ME THE QUIZ ONLINE, IT’S ALL VERY OFFICIAL. THE MOM FRIEND IS THE ONE THAT MAKES SURE EVERYONE GETS ALONG, YELLS AT YOU UNTIL YOU DO THE RIGHT THING, TAKES CARE OF THEIR FRIENDS WHEN THEY NEED IT, AND CLEANS UP THE MESSES EVERYONE MAKES BECAUSE THEY LOVE THEM SO MUCH. OF COURSE, IT’S REALLY CALLED BEING ‘THE PAPYRUS FRIEND’, BUT I THINK BEING LIKE A MOM IS FINE, TOO.”

That almost saddens you a little.

“You’re a real a-awesome dude, Papyrus,” you hiccup softly.

“I AM A VERY COOL DUDE, YES,” he replies soberly.

You blink up at him. “Are you a dude?”

“I AM A SKELETON,” he says in a tone that sounds like he’s agreeing with you. “ARE YOU ALSO A DUDE?”

You think about that for a hot morphine minute.

“Sometimes?” Then you frown. “Was visiting my sister, someone called me “sir”. I don’t like that. But you n me, we’re just...dudes being dudes, you know?”

“YOU’RE LIKE FRISK,” he says at the television.

“huh?”

“A HUMAN,” he replies obliquely.

You sigh.

“Sorry if that’s weird… sorry if I’m weird. Guess I’m a little bit of a weirdo?”

He looks down at you, and suddenly his eye sockets seem impossibly dark, like they go on forever. As if the space inside his skull doesn’t exist in the same dimension you do, and maybe even as _he_ does. It’s unsettling, to say the least, and you shiver slightly.

The, just as suddenly, he’s back.

“You’re no weirdo!” he scoffs. “You’d never hurt a fly! Well, flies, _maybe_ , but nothing sapient. HP could be higher, though. Well, that’s for tomorrow.” His eyes catch on your bookshelf. “Besides, you obviously like puzzles,” he says inexplicably.

“...board games...” you try. Tomorrow? Huh?

“Exactly!” He smiles, satisfied. Alrighty then. Wait, is he talking...different? What?

Oh, hey. Here comes nap time like a freight train. Choo choo! Nice.

***

Hmmm. You stir just at the edge of awareness, trying to figure out why you feel so...contained. You blink your eyes open at last, but your field of vision is filled by an enormous skull.

“GOOD MORNING, HUMAN!” it crows at you.

You squawk, and attempt to jump to your feet. Incredibly, it works, and a mixture of empty and filled cellophane wrappers rain down as you backpedal away from Papyrus.

“IT WORKED! YOU MUST BE DELIGHTED.”

“uhhh...” you state eloquently. Then you sort of just...bend your knees. You look back up at Papyrus.

“Holy shit. I feel fantastic.”

“NYEH HEH HEH. YOU’RE WELCOME. NOW, GET DRESSED, I TOLD ALPHYS WE’LL BE THERE IN AN HOUR.”

“Uh...what? Papyrus, I haven’t even had any coffee yet, and I don’t know, uh, what you mean?”

His face falls, but he picks it right back up a second later.

“YOU HAVEN’T READ MY NOTE. I SEE. I ALSO FORGIVE YOU. WE’LL STILL MAKE IT ON TIME IF YOU GET READY NOW. IT’S ONLY SLIGHTLY OUT OF TOWN, AND WE CAN GET SOMETHING FOR YOU ON THE WAY.”

“But...” you drift helplessly. “Where are we going?”

“TO MAKE THE ART,” he says, putting his hands on his hips. “I TOLD YOU I’D MAKE IT UP TO YOU!”

Oh, right. The thing where he destroyed some clothes of yours you don’t even remember. Well, you seriously do feel fantastic. Full of energy, somehow, and your body barely...wait, it _doesn’t hurt_. It actually doesn’t hurt at all.

You spend several seconds gaping at Papyrus, who’s just sort of...holding his pose, then you turn around, grab a few bits of trash off the floor, and go upstairs to brush your teeth and get dressed.

You check the weather on your phone, and it looks like it’s finally starting to warm up a little. You try again not to think about the month you lost, especially since you’re already somehow having a fantastic day. Which is baffling, considering how absolutely _godawful_ yesterday had been. You can’t think of the last time you’ve recovered from something like that so quickly. You’re ready to go along with whatever Papyrus has in store solely for what the cuddle healing had given you, but you also are really looking forward to seeing how he makes that paint, or bones, or whatever it is he does to make those incredible artworks. You blink, remembering Sans had said something about him actually _giving_ you one of them…? Wow, you think as you pull on a long green smock and jeans, and an equally long cardigan over it just in case it’s breezy. Okay, yeah. You’re really excited.

When you get downstairs, you see you weren’t the only one who’s had a costume change.

Papyrus is now wearing much longer denim shorts, cuffed, and a long white t-shirt topped with the dashing red scarf you remember from before. His gloves are the red ones you remember, but he seems to have added a clear red plastic visor on some kind of rainbow sweatband. And canvas sneakers. Huh.

“Snazzy,” you remark approvingly.

“I CAN HARDLY EXERT MYSELF IN EVENING-WEAR.” He preens a bit, then gets down to business. “DO YOU HAVE PLENTY OF WATER IN THAT?”

You look down at your bag, then pull on your boots in case it’s muddy. You’ll tie them in the car.

“Yes?”

“OKAY, THEN LET’S GET REACQUAINTED WITH MY CAR!”

You both stroll out into the weak spring sunshine.

After a quick stop off for two large lattes that you insist on paying for, the drive takes you all the way out to the outskirts of Ebott, and you notice a few large uncultivated areas as you soar past at five miles under the speed limit. You’re a little quiet, almost like you’re worried if you talk to much or move too suddenly, the odd bubble of good health you’re floating in will burst, and you’ll be collapsing just like you did last night all over again.

It’s been maybe half an hour, during which you’re glad you wore the cardigan but also enjoy the wind blowing around, when Papyrus finally makes the left turn he’s been signaling for 30 seconds and you go down a little lane into one of the fields. You smell water, and realize the direction you’d taken out of the city proper is the one that’s closer to the ocean than the mountain that gives the town its name.

There’s no sign or anything, but what you pull up to is a gravel driveway with a barn across the way. Even further than that is a house that’s partially visible through a copse of trees. Looks kinda big.

“Whose barn is this?” you ask your skeletal companion hesitantly.

“I SUPPOSE IT BELONGS TO ALPHYS?” He’s fiddling with something in the back seat as you open the car door on your side, shoulder your bag, then shut it behind you. You notice belatedly that he hasn’t touched his latte, and you flush a little. It’s human food, after all. Maybe skeletons can’t have that, no matter how cool and fashionable they are. Well, you won’t mention it, either way. He still looked good holding it earlier, and he looks good answering your question.

“WE ALL USE IT FOR THIS AND THAT. MUCH LIKE A SHED THAT WAY. A _COOL_ SHED. NYEH HEH HEH,” he giggles absently. Wait a second. Did he say Alphys?

“Is that like, a common name? For monsters?”

His head comes up, and then his red-gloved hand with a heavy-looking canvas sack follows.

“...NYEH? I DON’T KNOW ANYONE NAMED COOLSHED.”

“Never mind,” you say, catching sight of two small figures near the barn. Well, one is small, the other one looks very tall. And...shiny? And suspiciously familiar?

“Papyrus,” you say faintly. “Is that...”

“METTATON!” He hollers at the top of his lungs, waving madly. “WELCOME TO THE FRIEND ZONE!”

Um. Okay, so apparently Papyrus _knows_ Mettaton. Gotcha. Well, this is going to be interesting for yet another reason.

You make you way over and as you walk up, you notice the shorter monster has a tendency to efface herself behind the shining, silver form of Mettaton, currently in his android form. It’s very striking, you must admit.

“Hel _lo_ , darling,” Mettaton begins. You’re relived to see that just like on TV, his lips move much the same as a human’s do, at least when he has the humanoid face. With the box form, you’d have no clue; although his voice still sounds like chiptunes it’s easy enough to lipread. Although he waers clothes all the time on TV, from what you're seen, he's not really wearing any today. The black, silver and pink bits all just seem to be part of his body... are the boots, too? Maybe that's just his legs. Plenty of monsters don't bother to wear clothes as an everyday thing, you've noticed. Mettaton is giving you a sparkling photo-ready grin. “Who’ve you brought to meet us today?”

Papyrus introduces you enthusiastically, and keeps on going which is kind of a relief. You hadn’t exactly anticipated meeting a star today, although considering Papyrus’s general mannerisms and demeanor, it’s kind of amazing to watch the two of them go.

The other monster- Alphys, apparently -is also introduced, and you wonder if she knows she has the same name as a famous scientist. One you in fact know a fair amount about from your work, mostly having to do with the restriction of information sharing she’d penned herself, in accordance with... the King and Queen of the monsters. Under the ‘supervision’ of... um...wait a second. Papyrus is obviously a member of Frisk’s family, and from what you know of the rest of it, so is Undyne and...oh. Oh man. This IS Dr. Alphys.

You realize you’ve stopped trying to listen to whatever the robot and skeleton have been animatedly discussing as they stroll off into the barn for something, but then Papyrus calls back over his shoulder as he smoothly dodges the hand that Mettaton looked to be about to clap him on the shoulder with. It looks accidental.

“HUMAN! MAKE SURE AND DO WHATEVER STRETCHES NECESSARY TO PREPARE FOR THE ENCOUNTER! I DON’T WANT YOU INJURING YOURSELF! STRETCHING IS KEY!”

You’re gaping after him wondering what the hell he means by THAT, when you realize it’s just you and Alphys standing there awkwardly under a tree. You look over at her and she ducks her head, already sweating. Geez. She's wearing a really cute sweater, looks like an interlocking pattern of green and pink...fish? Otherwise she's just got on jeans and sneakers. She’s not what you imagined, but it has to be her. Still…

“So, um, you’re Dr. Alphys, right? Royal Scientist?”

“Um, y-yes? Yes, I’m-I-I’m Alphys,” you’re pretty sure she says, her voice low and feminine, marked with a profound stutter. It doesn’t actually impede her stiff, scaled lips as that much, but it’s still a little hard for you to see exactly what she’s saying.

“Do you happen to know ASL?” you ask hopefully, signing along. She brightens at that, much to your relief.

“Oh, sure,” she gestures easily, her mobile fingers tipped with sharp-looking claws. “I knew it already, even before Frisk...well. Did you have a question for me?”

She doesn’t speak while she signs, but she’s fairly expressive, and actually seems more comfortable this way. Interesting for a hearing monster.

“I’m wondering,” you gesture a little hesitantly, “what Papyrus meant by ‘encounter’? I thought he was going to show me how he makes his paintings.”

“Oh,” she says, brightening again. “Yes, that’s how he designs them. He said he’s making one for you? You must be looking forward to it! The one he gave Undyne and I for-” she cuts off, possibly seeing the blank incomprehension on your face.

She grins a little, upper teeth sticking out charmingly. She’s rather good-looking. “You’ve never been in an encounter?”

“No,” you say both verbally and in sign. You _really_ don’t want to be misunderstood. “I have health problems. I um,” you hesitate, but it’s important. “I’m having a good day, but I’m not sure this is something I should risk. Isn’t it dangerous?”

You’re relieved to see her grin soften, and she seems to taking your concerns seriously.

“I might have cautioned you, not that you have to, you know, explain yourself to me,” she gestures reassuringly, “if it was anyone but Papyrus. You could be on the verge of falling down and I’d still tell you to go for it,” she gestures absently, gazing into the depths of the barn where Papyrus and Mettaton appear to be fiddling with something in a bin. She’s got a weirdly intent look on her face.

“Um-” you start, then cut off when you remember she can hear you. “I don’t know, he seems very...large. Isn’t an encounter like, a fight? What if he just hits me by accident?”

“Papyrus doesn’t _make_ mistakes,” she explains distractedly. “I’ve never seen the kind of magic control he’s got, and I’ve been around a while.” She’s practically leering, now, and it’s honestly weird to see that kind of expression on her. She seems unexpectedly mercurial for a monster of science. You peer into the barn’s depths, a little easier now that a cloud is covering the still-thin sunlight for a moment or two. Papyrus seems to find exactly what he’s looking for at just the right moment to avoid what appears to be a brush from Mettaton’s shiny pink shoulder. Huh. And it’s not like Mettaton is bothered by this; he just flips his hair with that hand in what seems to be a natural gesture.

“How long has _that_ been going on, then?” you comment dryly. “They seem to have a lot of practice.”

Alphys’s face manages to pinken through the orange of her scales, and she indulges in a surprisingly guttural giggle. “We used to have a pool on whether or not Papyrus (1)” and she actually is forming the numbers for the points, um, wow okay, “is sincerely unaware, (2) isn’t interested and pretending to be unaware, (3)is completely aware but just likes winding Metta up, or (4) is interested and just making an artform out of playing hard to get... but it got abandoned after no one would take the first two anymore and we just divvied it back up.” She snickers, then sobers a little wistfully. “Well, actually more like we all know that we’d never find out anyways. If Papyrus doesn’t want to tell you something, he just plain won’t. Of course when Sans-” She finally tears her eyes away from the two in the barn and looks at you like she had an idea.

“You’ve met his brother?”

You gesture affirmative.

“He made one of his artworks with Sans once,” she muses. “It’s _amazing_. I think it might even be better than the one we have, even if it’s smaller... but as far as I know, Papyrus kept it himself.” she looks back towards the barn. “Can you imagine him doing anything that could ever hurt his brother, even on accident? If that was even a _possibility_?”

You look at her pensively, nod in acknowledgement, and take a deep breath. You’re not sure what the import of some of what Papyrus had told you the night before is, but apparently Sans and you might have some stuff in common. You might be a little slow on the uptake, but you’re not a fucking tree stump. He’s barely half his brother’s size, although with monsters that doesn’t always matter. But you are sure neither brother would ever harm the other, and if Sans is… vulnerable, somehow? Yeah, what Alphys has told you actually does make you feel more confident about whatever this is going to be.

It’s good timing, considering Papyrus is striding out of the barn towards you, Mettaton with a boxy, old-looking camera and some other more esoteric equipment in tow. The silvery robot in no way comes off as an assistant of any kind. They both manage to be equally self-absorbed, which is impressive in that it’s not as offputting as you’d think it would be.

“Oh-o-oh, l-looks like they’re r-ready!” Alphys stutters, shuffling hesitantly towards them. Her hands fold back almost against her forearms, which in turn fold into her chest as she smiles at them, blinking. This family is an incredibly eccentric group, even for monsters. They’re really...something.

You and Papyrus meet on the lawn between the trees and the barn, and Alphys and Mettaton stand back, thought they seem to be conversing casually as they look on. Papyrus seems relaxed and genial, grinning at you in the sunshine, which has returned in the meantime.

“So, um, will they actually be able to see what we’re doing once this...starts?” you ask, glancing back and forth between them all.

“NOT REALLY,” Papyrus says as he gestures to a spot about ten feet in front of him for you to stand. “DID YOU STRETCH AS PER MY INSTRUCTIONS?”

“Oh,” you say a little shamefaced. “No, I-I was talking with Alphys. We got...talking.”

Papyrus narrows his sockets and shoots a sidelong glance over at her.

“I’M SURE SHE DID,” he says a little nasally, which is impressive for someone without any sort of nose whatsoever. Then his face clears completely, and the jovial and downright innocent grin you’re rapidly beginning to suspect is his default facial expression returns.

“WELL, YOU’RE IN LUCK! THE DESIGN I HAVE IN MIND WILL NOT REQUIRE ANY EXERTION WHATSOEVER ON YOUR PART! IN FACT!”

Papyrus waves his hand somehow, and everything outside of the area you’re both standing in disappears. You squawk in surprise and instinctively duck. Everything inside the space is...washed out, somehow. Even the colors of Papyrus’s clothes are gone, and he looks like a...well, not a ghost. He still looks very much like a skeleton.

“DON’T WORRY, HUMAN! THIS ISN’T DANGEROUS AT ALL. IT’S YOUR TURN, SO ALL I CAN DO IS TALK RIGHT NOW ANYWAYS!”

“Can I talk too?” you ask hesitantly.

“YOU ALREADY ARE! ISN’T THAT FANTASTIC?” he hollers.

“Yeah,” you whisper, looking around in wonder. “So, um, what do we do?”

“PICK A SPOT AND SIT DOWN, IF THAT WILL BE COMFORTABLE,” he says confidently. “YOU SHOULD STAY STILL, SO MAKE SURE TO PICK A GOOD SEAT.”

“Oh, should I-” you cut off as you look down and notice a glowing blue shape in your chest, which seems to have become somehow...transparent. “Uhhhhh,” you say faintly. “Is that supposed to happen?” your voice sounds higher than its usual neutral tenor.

“YES, EVERYTHING IS FINE.” His bright grin is encouraging and calming.

“Okay,” you say, trying to make yourself sound a little more normal. You look around for a soft-looking spot, then slowly lower and settle yourself.

“NOW, IT’S MY TURN. STAY STILL, AND LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED TO MOVE AT ANY POINT. I’M GOING TO MAKE YOU BLUE NOW, EVEN THOUGH YOU ALREADY...EH. MAKE SURE AND DON’T MOVE, OKAY?”

“Um, okay,” you call weakly.

The next thing you know, you’re squeezing your eyes shut when a blue wave of _something_ whooshes past-no, it actually goes right through you. The air hums wildly with magic. You feel heavy, somehow, but not tired or sleepy. In fact...you just sort of find yourself slipping backwards gently until you’re actually lying down on the grass. Before you have a chance to say anything about it, Papyrus speaks.

“OKAY, IT’S YOUR TURN! YOU CAN MOVE NOW IF YOU NEED TO. OR EVEN IF YOU’D LIKE TO, BUT DON’T TRY AND MIMIC MY CALISTHENICS! THEY ARE NOT FOR BEGINNERS!”

You straighten out your legs a little, but otherwise this really does seem to be fine. You’re still not in any pain, and even if this is completely unfamiliar experience, it doesn’t seem to be anything like the dangerous confrontation you had worried it might be. You’re literally just laying here, feeling a veritable tsunami of magic roaring around you. It’s intoxicating.

_He’s like some kind of_ _m_ _onster_ _art jock_ , you think wonderingly.

“I’m good!” you call out, and the blue flashes past you again, this time in some other pattern.

They’re bones, you realize finally, just like the ones Sans had showed you, but they’re _blue_. Hundreds of them. Thousands? Holy shit, he is really not messing around. Your hair’s practically crackling with it, and you have to hold your breath to keep from laughing giddily. You can’t see what (if anything) Papyrus is doing physically from this position, but when you look up, a massive spiral of glowing blue lines is converging on you from above. You try not to squeeze your eyes shut but sadly, you fail as they whoosh right through your face.

“HMM,” Papyrus says calmly, sounding almost quiet after the intensity of the magic attacks he’d been throwing around. “IF IT’S NOT TOO MUCH, DO YOU THINK YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO STAND UP? AND POSSIBLY...STEP OVER SOMETHING? IT WILL STILL BE FINE IF YOU CAN’T, I HAVE SOME LEFT OVER,” he adds almost pensively. “BUT I LIKE TO KEEP THEM ON THEME.”

You have no idea what he could possibly mean by that last part, but you’re feeling kind of invigorated and you sit up fairly easily, despite the heaviness in your chest. Then you stand, and notice you’re just kind of...embedded in the middle of a forest of bones stuck in the ground. Whoa. That’s really...whoa. Some of them are taller than you.

“I...think I can do it!” You call back, and you’re fucking pumped. “Yeah! Let me have it!”

Papyrus is standing across from you, grinning back proudly.

“IT WILL BE SLOW,” he informs you archly, “SO TAKE YOUR TIME, AND HAVE FUN!”

He gestures, and you notice a few white bones, no more than ten inches high, moving across the ground toward you from the left. Your knees are still feeling pretty flexible, and you carefully step over each one as they come. They trail off somewhere into the design around you, and you see that Papyrus is watching something carefully that you can’t see.

“OKAY!” he calls back after a minute. “I’M SPARING YOU!”

“Huh?” you say, confused.

“I SPARE YOU! NOW YOU SAY IT BACK!”

“Oh,” you reply gamely. “Um, I spare you!”

The darkness around you vanishes abruptly, and you feel light again. And it _is_ light, you realize, wincing a little. Well, your eyes will adjust soon enough.

All the bones are still there, though.

“Hey, Papyrus? How do I, uh, get out?”

“YOU DON’T YET,” he says a little distractedly, and that’s when you see him duck down. When he comes back into your view, Mettaton’s on his shoulders like they’re about to play chicken. You can’t stop the laughter burbling up this time, or the second time as Mettaton’s ridiculous, tubelike arms shoot upwards, holding a camera.

“Smile, beautiful!” he calls vivaciously, and graces you with one of his own. It’s easy to return it, because you already are.

After several more shots as they circle the former arena, they finish up and grab what look to be canvas laundry bags. They’re gathering up the bones, you realize as they clear a path to you. Alphys has a bag too, and smiles gently to herself as she pulls a stubborn orange bone out of the ground.

“Oh!” you say, surprised. “I didn’t see any orange ones?”

“THAT WAS WHEN YOU KEPT SQUEEZING YOUR EYES SHUT,” Papyrus replies almost absently.

“Oh,” you say, a little deflated. “I’m sorry, I-”

He looks up at that, giving you his best enthusiastic grin. “YOU’RE A NATURAL! THE GREAT PAPYRUS WILL BE PUSHED TO NEW HEIGHTS WITH THESE VARIATIONS!”

For some reason, you believe him.

He walks over after a few more minutes and holds out a small cloth bag. You wonder if it’s dice or something, but it clinks in your hand.

“THIS IS FOR YOU,” he grins.

“Wait a second, is this money?” You say, perturbed.

“YES?”

“Um...I don’t need any money, Papyrus,” you say quietly, but you think of what Sans had talked about before.

“IT’S FOR NEW CLOTHES,” he elaborates.

“Wait, is this-” you pull the bag open. “This is G!”

“YES?”

It’s a fair amount of monster money, and your heart clenches with anticipation. Wow. It’s really rare for a human to get something like this, and the same limits don’t apply when you go shopping downtown with this kind of currency. You can get as much as you want with this! You could even-

“Papyrus. It’s too much. Everything you’ve already done-”

“DON’T YOU THINK YOU DESERVE SOMETHING NICE?” he says almost sadly. “I CAN’T FORCE YOU TO TAKE IT, BUT I THOUGHT YOU COULD REPLACE THE CLOTHES TRAGICALLY LOST TO MY BROTHER’S MISINFORMATION.”

“Wait, _Sans_ tried to clean my clothes?”

“SANS TOLD ME FIRE MAGIC WOULD WORK ON THEM,” he somehow manages to pout without having lips. “BUT IT ONLY MADE THE SMELL WORSE, WHICH SHOULD HAVE BEEN IMPOSSIBLE... AND ALSO OBLITERATED WHAT I HAD MANAGED TO SALVAGE SO FAR.”

“Well, I gotta tell you, Papyrus. I’m not anywhere near as fashionable as you are, and I don’t think I ever will be. Maybe it’s for the best.” You grin up at him. “You put those threads out of their misery.”

He gets pink, and actually giggles a little. You hold the little bag to your chest and feel a warm glow at having told something resembling a joke that he was willing to laugh at.

“Thank you. I’ll get something nice.”

“OF COURSE. LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED HELP CHOOSING SOMETHING. THOUGH, IT LOOKS YOU LIKE YOU HAVE FRISK’S TASTE. I’D HAVE TO ASK THEM FOR ADVICE,” he turns, distracted and for a second you wonder if that was meant as an insult..? But actually, even though it seems like this family banters a great deal, they don’t appear to be insulting each other the vast majority of the time. Almost everything Papyrus says can be taken a lot of different ways, after all, when they aren’t complete non sequiturs. Or...maybe he always says exactly what he means, and everyone else is just projecting their own interpretations on...uh….

Papyrus finally stops fiddling with the boxy camera and glances up at you suspiciously. Then his brow clears again.

“THINKING TOO HARD WILL GIVE YOU A HEADACHE, YOU KNOW. BESIDES, IT’S TIME TO MIX THE PAINT!”

You all head toward the barn, and it’s interesting to see inside. Weirdly enough, a lot of it seems taken up by machinery, although some of it is covered in large tarps. There’s even a stove that looks like it’s seen better days, but as you walk past, you notice it smells like what you remember of a soapmaking class you took as an elective a long, long time ago.

“You’re a crafty dude, Papyrus,” you comment casually, and although the skeleton smiles a bit, Mettaton laughs a little more loudly than is appropriate. Alphys titters into her claws and darts glances. Yeesh.

The bones, which have apparently now been sorted by color, are fed into one of the tarp-covered machines by Papyrus and Mettaton while Alphys fiddles with a panel. You wander over to her very casually, but for some reason she starts sweating a little.

“So, how does this work?” you ask lightly.

“O-oh, w-well, um...this basically turns the magic attacks into colors that c-c-c-can b-b-be used t-t-to...paint? With?” She says, looking up at you like you’re going to somehow find a problem with that. You sigh regretfully, wishing you knew what on earth is setting her off.

“You don’t have to tell me exactly what’s going on, especially if it’s-” you cut off, thinking suddenly. Could this have to do with information that’s restricted by the monsters? Huh. You hadn’t considered the possibility, but Alphys’s nervousness makes you wonder. And you remember the sequences, like hexadecimal color codes, but longer and more complicated.

“So, I’m not a monster,” you state easily. “If this is like, a, I don’t know. Collaborative process? Will it still work, since I’m human and don’t have magic?”

“O-o-of course,” She answers absently, poking at some kind of touch screen with the tip of a claw. “Frisk’s is in their r-r-room, I think. Although t-there’s m-m-more than one. Not sure who h-h-has them. M-maybe Toriel?”

“Huh,” you say pensively. “So, do the colors change depending? Like, blue or green for some people, and-what color are the ones with Frisk?”

“Purplish, mostly” Alphys replies, frowning at what she’s doing. It seems like the kind of process that needs a lot of babysitting. Or is she really that uncomfortable talking to someone she doesn’t know very well? You don’t know _her_ well enough to get an idea. “It’s s-s-s-so _dark_ ,” she mumbles to herself. “Well, h-he can m-m-mix them himself, h-he a-a-always finds the… hmm.”

“Huh,” you say aloud, lost in thought yourself. “Does the color have to do with souls, then?”

Alphys literally flinches, and you look at her in alarm. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

She’s sweating again, but rather than seeming nervous, she actually just looks incredibly...sad? That’s not what you would have expected, even given your faux pas. “Sorry, I work at Ebott University,” you try and reassure her. “I know better than to ask you about that. I was really only thinking out loud.”

She smiles, managing to somehow look even sadder because of it. “That’s w-where the Soul Studies c-c-classes are, right?” You nod. “Th-th-that’s what I th-thought. S-s-sorry.” She looks up at where Papyrus and Mettaton look like they’re finishing up, and glances back at you. “I have to g-get back to the h-house. Let them know e-everything’s p-p-pretty much the same as usual, okay? They’ll fill up w-w-when they’re d-done.”

And with that, she just shuffles away.

“Nice to meet you,” you think she says, but she doesn’t turn around so you’re not sure.

Yeesh. You’re not sure how, but you feel like you really biffed it.

Papyrus climbs back down to where you’re standing, but doesn’t mention Alphys’s unannounced departure. You watch Mettaton and Papyrus have what seems like almost a normal conversation. You don’t actually understand most of it, on account of the machine is actually making some kind of noise now and your lipreading can’t carry you through robot or skeleton mouths as well as you’d hoped. Eventually, they reach under the tarp and remove several canisters of heavily pigmented fluid. Three are a very dark blue you thought was black at first, one is orange, and another is white.

As he’s driving you back home, you turn to Papyrus and wonder how to express the many conflicting feelings you’ve come away with. The last 12 hours have packed three times as much activity in than you’re used to, and although some of your aches are returning you’re still surprisingly okay. You won’t have another appointment with Vulkin until the day after you’d planned to originally return home, but you think you’ll be okay until then. He’d really helped you, and not only that, he’d made good on promises you hadn’t even known he’d made in the first place. Maybe he’d helped you the way he had so he could make good on those promises? You’re not sure.

Or maybe it really is just that he’d said you were friends. Sheesh. Has it really been so long since you’ve just...made friends? Like you don’t know how to fucking act anymore?

“Papyrus?”

“YES?” The shades are back on his face, but he took the clear visor off at some point.

“Are we...alike, somehow? Some way I don’t know about?”

Aww. He’s doing the teeth-parted look again. You sigh, and just drink your water quietly for ten minutes or so. He actually _can_ be quiet too, you’re realizing, but you hope you didn’t bum him out. Or is it one of those question you seem to keep asking that no one’s technically allowed to answer, or they’re just more personal than you realize, or… Maybe you should just take your friend’s advice and stop thinking so hard you get a headache.

“YES,” he says, and you jump for a second, thinking he’s reading your thoughts and agreeing with his advice or something.

Then you realize he just answered the last question you’d asked him.

“Thanks, friend,” you say, and make a conscious decision to be more circumspect in the future.

His gloved hand pats yours approvingly as Ebott’s few tall buildings become visible over the highway’s horizon.

 

 


	6. a prob for bob

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [The Cure - Close to Me [Closer Mix]](https://youtu.be/phMX4DBafG4)

When you finally go back to work, there are no less than three requests for you to sit in or give guest lectures over the next week in your inbox. Huh. Well, you guess even if it’s been a while, it’s still nice to know you’re wanted. The first two are no surprise, since they’re asking for lectures in MAHI, or Monster and Human Interaction which is basically built off monster history and human social sciences. That’s your wheelhouse, or as close to it as you get. Being a jack of all trades is a necessity in your position, but it also it gives you a sense of satisfaction to be able to use those trades individually from time to time.

However, the third message makes you both excited and nervous, because it’s requesting you as a translator for Frisk Dreamurr’s first sit in at Soul Studies. You’re really glad they decided to take the plunge, even if it looks more like they’re consulting than attending. In fact, the arrangement is very like when one of the monsters decides to come and answer questions. You assume Frisk must have some kind of expertise, at least relative to the department here, so maybe they’re using this format to sort of scope the whole thing out. Hopefully with less unexpected violence and potential destruction this time around.

***

You: I guess Frisk decided to come give Soul Studies another shot? I’m scheduled as a translator Friday

sans: yeah. just told me earlier. gotta be honest I never know what that kids gonna do

sans: but I guess you already knew that huh

You: Are you worried they’re going to spill all the soul beans? :P 

You: But yeah it seems like most parents feel that way once their kids get a certain age

sans: huh. never thought of myself that way

You: ?

sans: as a parent

 ***

You’ve got the morning today to get situated, which you don’t technically need for organizational purposes (you can check almost anything to do with paperwork and schedule at home) but you’re grateful to have it clear just to get mentally reacclimatized. Instead of doing that, you find yourself mulling over recent events and tonguing at the mysteries that seem to be lurking around the monsters like a loose tooth.

Maybe the restriction on knowledge really did come from higher up, despite what Frisk had said when you met them. Or at least, that was the impression you’d come away with? Seems there’s a lot more going on there than you’d thought.

And then of course there are the skeleton brothers, who each in their own way seem to have taken your magical or soul health as their personal responsibility. You’d picked up a sense of guilt from both of them, and you’d gotten the impression at first that it’s some kind of cultural obligation since their relative has some pretty unprecedented abilities and you’d gotten some sort of injury from the blowback.

Now that you’ve had a few days to ruminate on your experiences, you’re realizing that every monster you’ve met has either overtly or subtly expressed deep disappointment and regret over human ignorance regarding souls in particular, and magic in general. Even Alphys, who you had believed responsible for recommending the sanctions in the first place. She seemed disappointed over not being able to answer your questions about whatever machine in her barn had been making Papyrus’s paint. Not unsettled or angry.

The one thing they all seem to have in common is that it seems like they’re not able to really tell you what’s wrong with you, while at the same time doing everything they can to fix it.

Or maybe it’s just been so long since you’ve made friends, you don’t know how anymore. Your suspicion could just be decades of defensiveness. The last appointment you’d had with Vulkin had been uncomfortably insightful...well, the part after she’d hugged you and departed had been. The second time looking at and touching your soul had been just as profound as the first, and the bag of hot dogs you’d found hanging on the doorknob -on the _inside_ of your door this time- had been just as refreshing. You’d found yourself missing Sans’s company, even as you sent him a slightly clipped text about boundaries and respecting them. Seems like Sans and Frisk have some stuff in common when it comes to undisclosed abilities, but it’s not like magic or secrets are too much of a further shock to you at this point. Instead of acknowledging it, he’d just sent a reply back about monster food never spoiling. You’re not sure whether to believe that or not, but the dogs had been fine. Good, in fact. Just maybe a little lonely.

You blink, realizing it’s actually almost time for your first appointment. It’s a Loox, recently moved from UnderEbott to topside, and looking for a certification in home healing. Huh. It’s probably the most popular certification for monsters at the University, and now you’re thinking about that in a different context. It’s what Vulkin does, after all. Hmm. Is this some sort of culture-wide guilt-driven phenomenon? You’ve never heard of a monster asking for compensation for their services, either, and now that you know about the soul thing….taking them out…

Your face heats a little, and you try to stop thinking about it like that. After all, now that you’ve seen and touched for yourself, it’s not like it’s a sexual thing...necessarily...just very, very _private_.

You’d assumed that only monsters with the magical aptitude for healing took the healing courses, which are monster-led and mostly function as their own separate college, in some ways. But after your experience with Papyrus, you wonder if maybe all monsters can do that...resonance...thing. To some degree, anyhow. Is Papyrus just really good at it, or is it just that he’d spent eight hours doing the healing? You don’t know, but you’re definitely grateful.

The Loox arrives, and you do the usual forms with it, noting it’s moved in to the tall apartment building downtown that you know houses a great many Loox, Froggits, and Whimsuns. At the end of the appointment Chell, the Moldbygg from the bursar’s, stops by and wiggles suggestively while extruding a few financial waivers for rent and utilities, then heads back to their calculator-infested lair. You give these to the Loox and it hops up and thanks you before leaving.

Diane peeks her head in to your office a few minutes later.

“How’d it go?”

She knows better than to ask you about your health, which you appreciate.

“Fine, it just wanted the home health cert stuff. I’ve got time to grab some lunch before the lecture later, you want me to grab you something?”

And just like that, you’re back in the rhythm.

***

sans: guess it makes sense now i think about it. talked to tori she gave me one of her looks

sans: maybe it shoulda been ap _parent_ to me?

You: Oh my god

You: Why are you like this

sans: hey u need more apostrophe dogs

You: Always

You: …

You: Want to come eat them with me again? It’s Shark Week.

***

“Okay, but why isn’t there like, racism against monsters? They’re a minority, right?”

Someone always asks this question, so you’re prepared as you give your second guest lecture a few days later.

“Basically because they’re _too_ different,” you answer, gesturing along here and there out of habit. Most of the hearing people in the classes you come to just assume you’re a really animated speaker.

“Racism didn’t just come out of nowhere, after all. It’s not naturally occurring; there were very specific motivations for the invention of ‘race’ as a concept, and structures have been built to hold it in place.”

You glance at the professor for this course, James. He nods; they’ve been acquainted with these ideas already, so you don’t have to go too in depth on it. No need for too much background. Just stick to the monster stuff.

“The reintroduction of monsters to humanity functioned a lot more like, if aliens had come to earth bearing gifts of technology and medicine. Something like racism needs both time and ironically, _familiarity_ to flourish; the monsters haven’t had either. In addition, we benefit too much from their presence to popularly justify organized attacks or even war on them. If that was going to happen, it would have needed to be as soon as they emerged, and they just spread everywhere too fast for that to work. And- what average people want matters more than it used to. Although it’s not unheard of for a few extremist groups to pop up here and there, the political trends over the past few decades have helped to pull the teeth of most domestic terrorism, since they can’t get their hands on the kind of firepower that used to be lying around everywhere.” Which just makes the attack on you, Frisk and Sans more of an anomaly nowadays, you consider as you continue.

“It also helps that monsters seem to be able to safely deescalate most individual conflicts with encounters. Because something about it forces communication of some kind, there’s rarely much violence involved. Magical or property damage, sometimes, sure. But monsters are extremely reluctant to fight, and are able to neutralize violent humans safely. We don’t have all the details, but...” you smile, and the class emits a soft sussuration of amusement. “Some authorities, even worldwide, aren’t happy about it, but it’s not like there’s much they can do. And in the end, they’re not hurting anyone, so.” The monsters keep their secrets well, but they’ve changed too many lives for the better to effectively be demonized. Speaking of which.

“There’s also the fact that to most humans, monsters are _cute_ ,” you say with a smile. “Like something out of an old-fashioned Pixar movie. It’s hard to drum up jingoistic war propaganda against a smiling, furry goat, even if he’s eight feet tall.”

The giggles are louder this time, considering how popular King Asgore is, but the same girl who’d asked the first question has her hand raised again. You point to her as everyone calms down, and she’s already opening her mouth.

“Okay, but like...why don’t interracial relationships happen? If they did, I bet we’d see more monster racism! Like if I brought some _monster_ home to my family!” She looks smug. You manage to keep from grinding your teeth, but a sigh escapes you. There’s always one of these, too. This time it’s the same one; maybe you should have brought a bingo card.

“First of all, it’s not interracial, it’s inter _species_. The vast majority of monsters and humans aren’t exactly compatible in those ways, but the fact is that they _do_ happen.” Before she tries get the bit in her teeth again, you continue.

“What you might have missed is that almost none of the humans in relationships of that kind with monsters are young white women of childbearing age, who are the only people in our region that standard has ever been applied to in modernity. Just look at the history and wording of ‘anti-miscegenation’ laws in this country alone." Okay, now you're going to have to generalize more than you'd like, but whatever. 

"And the reason for that is the same thing James has been telling you about, the idea that control of white womens’ reproductive capacity, or their 'purity', is tantamount to defending the purity and purported superiority of ‘the white race’, something that has only existed as a concept for a relatively short amount of time.”

Oh, you’re the one getting the bit in your teeth now. Oops. Well, James looks somewhere been amused and relieved, so you keep at it. Besides, this shit annoys you.

“None of the _rest_ of us have any purity in the first place to be somehow defiled by monsters, so why would that provoke any outrage? Colonized peoples, formerly enslaved peoples...well, these populations have been marrying each other for centuries in this nation, but you can look at that history too and see that few if any laws existed regulating mixed race offspring unless one of the races was white. Leading to one of the biggest points there. Monsters and humans are different species; they _can’t produce offspring_ together. There’s nothing to defend against being supposedly defiled, there’s no argument to be made, at least at this point in our sociocultural context. And it’s not even like being gay-even that kind of prejudice exists because it is familiar, because it is common, and because it has been nurtured by society. Because,” and now you’re all the way in, “because _people_ _in power_ _benefit from that prejudice_.”

“Humans, even certain historically prioritized subsets of humans, _don’t benefi_ t from systematically discriminating against monsters,” you assert, gesturing with finality. “So, they don’t. Monsters are also incidentally saving the world from complete environmental havoc, almost singehandedly. Their suggestions for ocean restoration, powered by the Core, the Core itself providing clean energy and undermining corpo-oligarchical interests in preventing changeovers to existing clean energy, already eroded in the latter days of lobbyist domination of government. There might not have been a world left if they hadn’t returned when they did, and between the sanctions and their ability to protect their resources from outright human theft, even the most determined fanatics have trouble coming up with rational reasons to want to make war on them or drive them back underground.”

You glance at the clock. Seems like a good ending point, and you managed to make this in the time allotted. And you feel satisfied; you might not keep abreast of every little detail, but you sure as hell know your sociology. This is an introductory course anyhow, you don’t have to get too in depth so you have a lot of room to just speak passionately without too much advance prep, just how you like it.

James comes up to you as the students gather their materials and break into groups to chatter among themselves, or just head out for other appointments or class meetings.

“Gotta say, that was one of your better explanations of all that.”

You look around, the girl whose questions had gotten under your skin has already left. You feel a little bad, you hadn’t meant to be quite so obviously corrective with your responses. It’s not really her fault she has those ideas in her head, although she hadn’t seemed all that young. You make a note to be more patient in the future, especially once you’re recovered from your most recent life-shattering health crisis.

“Thanks. I think I was a little too, um...strident? Maybe? But...”

He smiles wryly. “Everything you said was on the nose, and exactly what I was hoping. Besides, I think Miss Kinney could do with a moment to consider perspectives outside her own.”

You nod thoughtfully, but still make a note to ameliorate some of your word choices, and add more context next time.

***

sans: heya

sans: hate to do this but something came up. left u the dogs tho

You: Hey, don’t worry about it. I get it.

sans: just a rain check

sans: work stuff. i’d much rather be eating dogs

sans: hell i’d rather be milking mettaton

***

 

Professor Bob seems in fine fettle, slipping briefly into the odd Temmie dialect in her enthusiasm.

“ToDAY!! am VERR special guest;; !!FRISK! Comign to tell about SOUL! We’re very excited to have you, Ambassador, so please begin whenever you’re ready.”

Frisk stands in front of the class, all ten of whom seem to be practically wriggling in their seats.

You’d met with Frisk briefly in the morning, and they’d seemed pretty mellow about the prospect of laying down some knowledge for the well-meaning if slightly haphazard group in Soul Studies. They didn’t seem bothered by returning to the scene where apparently some pretty awful stuff had(‘nt) happened either, although for you it’s still a sore area to think around. You’re still taking your time on that, and it bothers you less to consider how much stuff you apparently don’t remember than it did at first. Despite everything, you’re healing.

When you and Frisk had arrived in the classroom, you’d spent a little while talking with Professor Bob, who’d seemed almost overwhelmed by Frisk’s presence, and each member of the small class had introduced themselves individually as they’d arrived. Most of them had burbled enthusiastically at them, and even you had gotten the impression that even the most knowledgeable among them now knew considerably less than even you do, now. You sigh, figuring Frisk probably is going to come away from this realizing they might be better off studying on their own. Oh, well. You tried.

Calmly, they start to sign a bit formally, as if they’ve prepared and practiced an entire speech, and you pitch your voice to carry as you translate their words into spoken English as closely as you can.

“Souls are the essential selves of both humans and monsters. Although human souls can vary in color, all monster souls are white, and inverted. The reason for this is-”

Oh, for fuck’s sakes. Someone’s already interrupting. You walk forward a bit and turn around to see who’s speaking. One of the younger students, Adam, is speaking and you manage to catch the end.

“-inverted mean?”

Okay, you’re probably going to have to stand at the side and whip your head back and forth like a tennis match. You sigh, anticipating the neck and shoulder pain you’ll probably be feeling later. Frisk can read lips, though, so at least you only have to translate one way, theoretically.

Wait-had they said humans souls can be different _colors_? Does that mean-

Oh, crap. Frisk is answering and you hurry to catch up.

“You know the shape souls take when condensed or exposed?”

Adam is nodding, but with that look on his face, you’re pretty sure he doesn’t actually.

“Well, monsters souls go the other way.”

You see a few confused looks, and Frisk goes to the whiteboard and draws two figures: a heart with the point down, and another with the point up. Huh. You hadn’t know there was such a big difference between human and monsters souls.

“What do you mean by different colors?”

Oh, dear. Now you’re the one talking out of turn, but your curiosity is boiling now. You’d thought all souls must be dark blue like yours, especially since...huh? You don’t know what the end of that thought had been going to be.

Frisk’s dark eyes glitter, but they seem amused, not annoyed.

“Human souls have different colors, depending on which trait is dominant.”

What the fuck? That’s...weird.

Jenny’s chiming in now. Yeah, it’s a typical soul studies meeting, from what you’ve heard.

“So like, metaphysically speaking, the feeling you'd get from someone’s soul would mean like-”

Frisk cuts her off mildly.

“No, I mean, they’re... _different colors_.” Frisk draws a few more point-down heart shapes with the dry erase pen, then scribbles inept shading in the boundaries: green, blue, yellow.

“This one-” they indicate the green heart “-represents, or um, maybe embodies, kindness. It means that this person is motivated by desire to help and nurture others, although their behavior doesn’t...might not necessarily reflect what you expect?”

Frisk, you’re realizing, is not very good at explaining things to humans. And these humans are not very good at quietly listening to someone who is more or less their age, maybe even younger.

Curtis speaks next. Apparently this is just a round table, not a lecture.

“So,” he says slowly, deep voice lending gravity to his question, “when you’re kind to others, it gives you a kind of green feeling?”

“No,” Frisk replies, seeming to lose a little more of their patience. “It’s the other way around if anything, and also...no. Someone with a green soul, their motivations arise from the desire to be kind, but who are they being kind _to_? Will helping one person hurt someone else? It’s not like you get an instruction manual, it’s just how you’re...shaped, kind of...” they press their lips flat. “but it’s a color instead of a shape. Kindness doesn’t make you a better person than say, bravery.”

You’re translating with half your brain, because you really want to ask what dark blue means. But at the same time, you really don’t want to have a round table discussion about why you know the color of your soul, at least not here.

“So, that means no matter how much you try and be kind, you can’t be? That sounds like some kind of fucked up predestination thing,” Adam retorts, sounding unnecessarily hostile about it.

Frisk looks like they’re at a loss, until it looks like a realization hits them.

“Have none of you ever seen a soul?” they gesture incredulously. “How is that possible? I thought you did encounters here sometimes.”

“Just with Professor Bob,” Curtis answers. “Gerson won’t do it.” You look over at the professor, and she looks...oh, geez. Her brow is beaded with sweat, and she’s...vibrating? What’s going on?

Frisk stands there looking almost dumbfounded, which is interesting to see. You haven’t seen them this expressive since….oh, man. Since the attack in this building almost two months ago, now. Then, in another eerie reminder, Frisk’s eyes narrow and their lips press into a line. They look like they’ve made a decision of some kind, and you brace yourself. However, none of that prepares you for what happens next.

“Each of us has a soul, even though most humans never see it, haven’t for millennia. They’re _there_ though, and that’s been proven although the details, and the people who know the details, are very much restricted.” Frisk’s face gets even harder as they continue, and you do your best to match your tone to what they’re saying.

“I don’t know _what_ you’ve been doing here, but if _none_ of you have _any context whatsoever_ for what I’m saying...”

They take a deep breath and put their hand on their chest. Then they slowly draw it away, and everything goes dim, somehow.

A bright red heart shape floats in front of their chest, cradled protectively with their hand under it. Your mouth drops open, and you can’t look away from it. It’s riveting, it’s _astounding_ , although you can’t say why for sure. There’s something _hard_ about it, and it _echoes_. Yours doesn’t echo! Does it? What? Something like...it reminds you of...oh, no...

“This is my soul. It is the very culmination of my being. You can see that I’m...”

They’re speaking in your peripheral vision, with modified one-handed signs you can still parse, but you feel like you’re in some kind of dream. You can’t even imagine talking right now, your mouth has gone dry. In some other plane of existence, you see them shoot a frustrated look at you, but then you hear a loud crash, and their eyes fly open as far as they’ll go. Frisk gulps, and slowly, carefully presses their hand back toward their chest. Their soul fades until it disappears, and the light in the room returns to normal.

You stand there like a poleaxed cow, unable to move or really think. Frisk had _seriously_ just..? Well, it’s not like you could see _into_ their soul like you’d been able to with yours, and now you have some context for the difference between seeing and seeing _into_ , and it’s overwhelming, but... They just pulled it out! Right here! How? The only monster here is-

Frisk rushes past you, leans down. You finally turn around and see the source of the crash.

Professor Bob is upside-down, all four white paws in the air and fainted dead away.

***

An hour later, you’re sitting across from a teary-eyed Frisk at one of the more isolated booths in the common eatery adjacent to the cafeteria. They serve both monster and human food here, and you’ve helped yourself to the daily amount humans who attend classes or work here are entitled to.

After they’d finished putting their soul away and rushed to Bob’s side, you’d somehow managed to explain to the babbling, flustered human students that the rest of the class was canceled due to the professor being unconscious and you and Frisk needing to deal with whatever the hell had just happened. They’d left reluctantly, and more than a little dazedly. But they’d left. Once medical had arrived to cart poor Bob away, you’d given Frisk a pat on the shoulder and invited them to lunch. They’d distractedly taken you up on it, and followed you to the cafeteria in a sort of self-recriminatory haze.

“I’m sorry,” they gesture again tightly.

You sigh.

“I’m sorry, too. I’m just-what on earth _was_ that?”

“I didn’t think it would be this bad. I. Um. I made a mistake.” They look down guiltily. “I forgot Bob was there.”

You put a few popato chisps in your mouth and crunch thoughtfully for a minute or two.

“Do you know what happened to Bob?”

Frisk actually flushes. “She was... embarrassed.”

That makes you blink, surprised. “Why?”

Frisk turns an even more reddish brown. “Monsters can see more than humans can,” they sign close to their chest, hunched down into the booth so only you can see what they’re saying. “I was...rude.”

You clear your throat, trying to pick just one of the approximately six million questions trying to tear their way out of it.

“How are you... _able_ to do that?”

Frisk doesn’t reply at all, but another fat tear leaks out from under their lashes and they wipe it away with a sleeve. You keep waiting, but it seems like they’re really not going to answer. Then you feel a little guilty...they’re still what, 19? Still a teenager. Still a kid, in a lot of ways.

“Hey,” you start sympathetically, but now Frisk is signing again.

“I keep making mistakes! I don’t know what I’m supposed to do! It wasn’t supposed to be so-” they scrub away another tear. Shit. “This is too hard,” they add, sniffling.

“I’m trying to understand, but I still don’t know what...what it is that hard? What are you hoping will happen?” Okay, at this point Frisk is obviously overwhelmed and distraught, and you’re not above going fishing.

“Does Toriel disapprove of you wanting humans to learn more about souls? Or even...Asgore, maybe?”

Well, they’re shaking their head, but also crying harder. Sheesh.

“Look, I...ended up meeting Dr. Alphys,” you say, and they blink back tears and lean in, surprised. “It wasn’t related to anything to do with the university, it was...personal.” you hurry out, then continue. “But anyways, it didn’t seem to me like she was really the one responsible for writing and recommending the sanctions on soul data. It must have come from higher up. And most people barely acknowledge they exist, even through a few select experts have sworn they’ve been proven to their satisfaction. But, I get it. If you can’t go through with it. Toriel, and Asgore...they’re the king and queen, after all. Even if they’re you’re family, they’re still in charge of that. If they’re really bearing down on you, it can be hard to go against everything you-”

They cut you off with a slashing motion.

“Humans were _fine_ for thousands of years! They didn’t deserve it after what they did, but they still were! I didn’t think...I didn’t think it would hurt anyone.”

Uh. What?

“I wanted to see how much you knew. I wanted to see if even after all this time...we were safe. And we are, and it didn’t end up...it _worked_ , right? Everything’s going to be...” They look up at you haggardly.

“Are you getting better?” they ask, seeming much younger. "Papyrus said you are. That you...I didn't need to make a decision yet." Looking for approval. Forgiveness?

In ASL, you don’t usually address someone by their own name. But you say it aloud as you sign.

“Frisk. Are you saying _you_ are the one responsible for the decision to limit human knowledge of souls?”

“It was the only way I thought we could keep it from happening all over again. I’m sorry, but...I still can’t tell you. It’s...I can’t.”

You gape at them silently.

“But we’re going to make sure you get better, okay? I...we talked about it. You’re going to be okay. Sans knows what to do! He’s really good at-” Frisk cuts themself off, bites their lips as a tear trickles over them.

“Frisk,” you half-whisper, gesturing. “How old were you when the barrier was broken?”

They blink at you rapidly, surprised even through their weeping.

“Eight, I think? I don’t know exactly because-”

You’ve reflexively covered your eyes, because the realization's hitting you like a freight train. The weird guilt. Everyone checking up on you. Maybe even the split between Frisk and Toriel...if _this_ is the kind of pressure they’ve been under their entire life, since they were _eight years old_...you can’t even imagine a child having to make those kind of decisions, being made responsible for the fate of an entire species. Wait, how long have they been able to….how long have they had these abilities? Are they somehow part...monster? What does any of this mean?

You need time to digest this. But more importantly…

You uncover your face with an unsteady sigh.

“Sorry about that. I just...I’m very surprised.”

Frisk looks confused, but seems like they’re going to stop crying soon. That’s hopefully a good sign.

“So, okay. I’m just wondering. Do you have any humans that you...know well? Spend time with? I’m just curious.”

They shake their head, gesture negative. “Not really?”

“Okay. Well, you already have my number, so I want you to know that you can call me anytime. If you want to talk about any of this or even if you….” How to put it? “If you just want to be around a human?” you try weakly. They just look baffled. Well, whatever, you keep going.

“I just need you to know one thing.”

You lean forward intently.

“ _I’m going to be fine_. I’m serious.” You make eye contact, sustain it. “You’re not responsible for my health. I know you feel like...somehow you’re the architect of everything that’s going on here, but sometimes...shit just happens. Okay? I am getting better, and even if I’m not ever gonna be healthy, that’s still got nothing to do with you, okay?”

Frisk hiccups a little.

“You sound like Papyrus,” they reply, looking confused but less upset.

That makes you desperately want to ask about what Papyrus had said to you in the car, but you just manage to restrain yourself because it’s pretty damn obvious this kid’s had enough for the day. Maybe for the rest of their life, but the most you can do is just let it go for now.

“I might, um, text to check up on you? Is it okay if I do that?”

Frisk blinks.

“Yeah? Of course. Or, you can always come over, if uh...that’s something you want to do? You and Papyrus are friends already, right? And Sans?” They look hesitantly hopeful, like a kid waiting for a pat on the head. Good lord. You put as much reassurance into your expression as you can manage, hope it'll do.

“Yeah,” you agree, smiling. “I’d like that.”

 

 


	7. working blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> here it is at last. my favorite chapter.
> 
>  
> 
> [Pete Yorn - Life On A Chain](https://youtu.be/_XwOeJW_9HU)

There’s a knock on your door about an hour after you get home from work. You’ve already changed into your pajamas and were about to sit down for an extended round of rewatching episodes of your fourth favorite show, so you call out “who is it?” hoping that you were mistaken and it was just your upstairs neighbor whacking something against a wall.

“banana.”

Sans’s voice penetrates the door easily despite the fact that its solidity is pretty impressive for an apartment. You still understand him despite obstacles that would usually turn your audio processing abilities to soup. You’re not really in the mood for visitors, but you have a feeling this visit might not be entirely social.

You open the door.

“heh. didn’t wanna ask banana who? guess we’re officially on a first name basis.”

You look at the short skeleton darkening your doorstep with a sigh.

“You don’t have a last name, Sans.”

“you don’t know that for sure.”

“Well, if you do you should have put it on Frisk’s paperwork.”

“i’d bust your chops over not inviting me in, but i actually came to see if i could, uh, buy you dinner.”

Your eyebrows raise sharply, and you let him squirm (except of course he doesn't) a minute before replying.

“This is about the Frisk thing, isn’t it.”

He shrugs. “gotta come to find out.”

You press your lips together at him, then pull the door open farther and take a step back.

“Come in,” you sigh. “Let me get dressed. Again,” you finish with a pointed look at him. His eyesockets are only half-open as he takes in your setup in the small living room with the game system box you usually use to watch streaming services on, the kettle and teapot and still-sealed snacks.

“looks like you had a good night planned out for yourself. ‘preciate you taking the time.”

You really want to gripe, but it seems like he’s being sincere. He does seem the type to respect the sanctity of some well-earned downtime.

“Where are we going, then?” you ask instead.

“what you got on is fine,” he replies with a lazy smile.

“I’m putting on real pants, at least,” you mutter, and go upstairs to find some. When you return, he’s leaning up against the wall with his eye sockets closed, but once you walk past him to slip on your shoes he perks up.

“You know I don’t have a car or anything, right? And I can’t walk very far,” you remind him.

He opens your door and points a fingerbone at a silver and black Vespa at the curb.

You look down at him with a bemused grin. “I haven’t seen one of those since high school. You take that thing on the highway?”

“not if I can help it,” he replies, “but it’ll get us to Grillby’s fine.”

He’s right, you think as you lock your door and walk towards his vehicle. That’s not very far at all if it’s the place you’re thinking of, along the main drag in the downtown monster district. You’ve gone past it a few times, but you weren’t sure exactly what sort of establishment it was. Sort of looked like a bar, but maybe it’s one of those gastro pub things. Definitely a monster place though.

“Hmm. I think I’ve seen it before, but I’ve never been there. You got a helmet for me?”

He leans over and grabs two brain buckets that had been hanging off the handlebar in the opposite side in lieu of answering and offers you one, plopping the other one casually onto his own bare skull. He checks the pod trunk he’s got affixed to the back of the vehicle, but closes it again without seeming to put anything in or take it out.

“you know the drill?” he inquires as he buckles his own chin strap.

“I think I can handle a ride on your crotch rocket,” you deadpan, earning a chuckle from him as he mounts the scooter and starts it. You awkwardly (and a little painfully) lift your leg over the bike, trying not to kick him or get your leg caught in your bag’s strap, and settle yourself in around his hips. They’re not narrow, but they feel...hard. Like bones, you suppose. But they’re not pokey or anything. It seems like he’s got the balance of the bike so you put your feet on the plate and bring your hands forward to….um… does he _have_ a waist? You’re not about to start patting him down looking for one.

“Hey, you want me to just grab on to you or what?”

“just hold my jacket on the sides.”

You fist your hands into the fabric low on either side of his torso, almost at his hips so you can rest your arms on your own legs. You manage not to argue that a hoodie doesn’t count as a jacket.

“I’m all set,” you crow at the back of his helmeted head, and then you’re both off with a dull roar. As you feel the weak horsepower of the tinny engine beating under you, you worry a little at what might have instigated this impromptu dinner invitation. He wasn’t being squirrely about it, exactly, but for whatever reason maybe he didn’t want to talk about whatever it was solely on your turf. But really you don’t think could it be anything other than Frisk’s stunt he wanted to discuss with you.

At the same time you can admit into the quiet of your own mind that if it had been anyone else, you probably would have refused the invite and just insisted on hashing it out on your couch. The fact is, you really don’t get out much, and Sans is actually a really fun person to be around. And hey, free dinner.

Speaking of which… When you stop at a light, you lean forward a little and ask “Hey, this place has monster food, right?” towards where his ears would be if he had any.

“heh. sure does,” the droll reply floats back to you even through the valiant putting of the engine. “monster drinks, too. like...alcohol? you tried it?”

The light turns before you get a chance to answer him, or to clarify that you almost never drink. You don’t feel like shouting after talking almost all day, so you just sit back and enjoy the ride. After a few more minutes, you’re over in the main drag of the downtown monster district of Ebott, noticing the preponderance of brick edifices and fairly tasteful landscaping. Businesses had started opening fairly soon after the monsters’ emergence, you’ve been told, and over time it had become not exactly a tourist spot, but definitely a place both humans and monsters could go to mingle and enjoy themselves.

Signs advertising bakeries, clothing stores, and specialty shops gleam neon or are tastefully painted, and there’s even a grocery store where monster food can be purchased, but only in limited quantities. You find yourself wondering again where it comes from, if they have entire farms underground, or if they somehow just produce it through magical energy? Transforming rocks into loaves of bread with magic words, or some kind of alchemical process?

You know how monsters’ enterprises have a tendency to subvert and undermine a lot of the commercial laws and structures in place on the human world, but you don’t keep a close eye on the havoc they’ve been wreaking economically with their generosity because it stresses you out. A lot of laws had been passed, repealed, amended and bulldozed without being able to actually do much about the monsters’ presence or activities. After all, once the monsters had had their personhood acknowledged, most of the proposed restrictions would have been unenforceable or wouldn’t apply only to monsters, latter being the motive of those who’d written them.

If anything especially egregious happens, your sister does keep tabs on that stuff and will let you know. Being constantly bombarded with information all the time erodes your empathy and motivation to help rather than enhancing it, and you know you’re holding down your little corner of making the world a better place. You don’t have to micromanage and absorb every bit of the minutiae of living in historic times, and it’s better to just deal with what’s already on your plate, so to speak.

Like the first meeting of Soul Studies. And how exactly Frisk had been able to take out their own soul. And whether it has anything to do with their ability to make things unhappen.

Sans pulls up near the edifice you’d remembered and parks the bike, less than a block away from the entrance.

“here we are,” Sans says, opening the old fashioned door and gesturing you inside. “grillbz sweet grillbz. you eat fries?”

You confirm that you do as you walk into the warm interior, and notice it does seem to be some kind of bar. There’s a fair amount of space in front of the bar proper even counting the barstools, and several booths and a scattering of tables populate the perimeter. A few seasoned-looking monster barflies dot the space, although it’s early enough yet that it’s not overwhelmed with the buzz of conversation. Some innocuous pop song is playing at a low volume, but you don’t know the song or the artist. A white Dog is sitting at one of the tables with a deck of cards, and someone ambiguously fuzzy and possibly unconscious lolls in one the corner booths.

The person behind the bar is made of fire.

“heya, hot stuff,” Sans quips as he saunters over. “what’s cookin?”

The bespectacled flame cracks and pops a little, and an unkempt duck at one of the barstools hollers, “Sans! Where you been, buddy? Missed you round here these past few.”

“here an’ there,” Sans replies easily. “kid’s been staying with us lately, so they keep me on my phalanges if you know what I mean.”

“Saaansy! It’s been aaaaages.” The inebriated bellow originates from the drunken person you’d noticed before, although now it seems that they’ve collected a few more people around them-more Dogs, and an elemental of some kind maybe? They seem kind of gooey, and moderately huge. Literally everyone manages to shout a greeting at Sans, and he tosses out saucy responses like confetti.

“This is a _townie_ bar,” you laugh, more surprised than you want to let on. “You’ve been a secret townie this whole time!”

“eh,” Sans equivocates, leaning his arms up on the bar. “can’t hold a candle to the place back in Snowdin for pure townieness, but this place’s got its charms. and a toilet,” he adds with a wink towards you. Oh. And, he had fingerspelled ‘candle,’ earning himself a belated eyeroll. “so, what’re you having?”

You purse your lips with a sigh. “I don’t usually drink, it doesn’t react well with my medication.”

“huh. didn’t think of that. but… you ever had it?” You shake your head. “monster booze doesn’t actually affect your body,” he continues. “not tryin ta pressure you or anything like that, just saying it might not be a problem, if that’s what you wanted.”

You think about that. “I’ll text Vulkin,” you reply slowly. “If she gives me the green light I might have something. In the meantime, where’s that dinner you promised me?”

“coming right up, no need to grill me about it,” he replies with a wink, then turns to the bartender, who flares up and makes the shadows dance a little nearby. “can I get two usuals down at seven?”

Grillby hisses and pops in reply, and Sans nods and starts over toward one of the far booths. You follow him and get seated, pull out your phone and shoot Vulkin a message. There’s a drink menu folded on the table, but you’ll wait a few minutes before bothering to peruse it.

Sans is already slumped back in the deep booth seat like a sack of potatoes, his head lolling to the side to gaze at you through half-mast sockets. His hands are buried in his hoodie pockets, and overall he seems incredibly relaxed here, surrounded by people familiar enough to know who he meant by “us” and “the kid”.

It’s interesting to you how often you’ve had to adjust your opinions about him. Eventually you speak into the mellow quiet that’s formed around your table as the regulars get their fill of greeting or ribbing Sans and go back to their pastimes, companions, and conversations.

“So, are you going to tell me what the deal is, or are you worried it’ll spoil my appetite?”

“well, the deal ain’t exactly big. tori heard some talk about the kid causing a midsize hullabaloo over at the school and asked me to look into it. i just went right to frisk an asked them first because i’m not about to make more work for myself. thing is,” he makes a sound like clearing his throat, which is odd since as far as you can tell he doesn’t actually have one. he’s also looking a little iridescent, adding more evidence for the impression that what Frisk had done was inappropriate in monster context.

“kid tells me they just pulled out their, uh, soul? in class?”

You smile, not without sympathy. “They sure did.”

“heh.” Sans leans forward a little and looks to the side. “they never were too shy i guess. not that i didn’t believe ‘em, just...how’d that go over?”

It actually looks like he’s sweating at this point, which is fascinating not only because you wonder why he’s this uncomfortable but because it’s apparently possible for bones to sweat.

You try to have mercy on him. “Sorry if I’m telling you something you already know, but...you know humans can’t see what monsters see, right? From looking at other people’s souls? Frisk actually explained that part. Professor Bob just fainted or whatever, so maybe it’s like she wasn’t even there for it. I don’t know if what Frisk did was the equivalent of, say, undressing and giving themselves a medical exam, maybe? But if we can’t really see the uh, culmination of their being or whatever it is you guys see, maybe it’s not as much of an exposure as it would be to monsters.”

“eh. i did know that, although it’s...well, that doesn’t matter. anything else happen?”

Before you answer, you feel your phone vibrate in your cardigan pocket.

“Huh. Vulkin says I should be fine if I don’t have too much. Do you have any recommendations for monster drinks I should try?

“sure,” he replies, “but uh, maybe answer my question first?”

For a guy who seems practically addicted to deflecting, he’s sure got this topic between his teeth. You give him a rundown of the class in full, and he just nods. You’re about to start asking your own questions when Grillby appears at the table, setting down two massive plates of medium cut french fries, then presents no less than four bottles of ketchup between his flaming fingers with a flourish. You each take two and thank him.

“could we possibly get two smooth regulars to go with this feast, hot buns?”

Grillby lets off a small but dark plume of smoke, and you snort. “That sounds impressively unappealing, but I guess i’ll trust you,” you reply, twisting the cap off your first bottle. You both tuck in readily, and you notice again that Sans’s mouth doesn’t really open very far, even when he eats. He swirls each fry into the morass of tomatoey goodness he’s poured on his plate, then just stuffs it in there somehow.

“So, are you gonna tell me how Frisk’s able to make things unhappen and pull out their own soul, or am I just supposed to be your mole at the university?”You try your fries. They’re fucking delicious.

Sans’s eye sockets close briefly, and when he looks at you his eye lights are steady. “how bout this. you tell me what _you_ think, and then i’ll decide whether to tell you if you’re right or not?”

“Interesting phrasing,” you reply, then eat another fry. After a moment, you continue.

“I think that Frisk has a lot of abilities that humans don’t have, and I think it’s something to do with magic. But whatever they did that day at the BioMed building...monsters can’t do that, either. At least, I don’t think they can. Humans obviously used to be able to do magic, since they created the barrier in the first place, but they can’t anymore and haven’t been able to for a long time. But...” you trail off in thought, eating a little more while you consider.

“The barrier kept in _all_ magic, not just the monsters. Like, something about you being in there cut us all off from that, uh, force? Substance? Not sure what to call it. So maybe that had something to do with humans not being able to do magic anymore. And forgetting it had ever been real.”

His expression is unreadably amiable as he makes his way through the plate of fries; you’re outpacing him again by a fair amount, despite the fact that you’re doing all the talking. You wonder if his jaw gets tired or something.

“I think that some monsters are really worried that gaining too much knowledge too quickly about magic and souls and monsters, humans might just take as much as they can get and seal all of you back underground as soon as they learn how, while others might not want to keep too many secrets. Especially since it seems to run counter to your natures, considering how freely you’ve offered up energy sources, food, medicine...everything. It’s a lot. I think you haven’t decided how you feel about it yet.”

Hmm. Maybe you’re on to something; he’s stopped eating and is staring into his plate thoughtfully.

“I’m wondering if there’s something about Frisk’s soul in particular you’d rather people didn’t find out about,” you add. “Or...maybe just certain people. Something Frisk wants to explore about themself.”

At that last one, you notice his eye lights shrink a little, get harder.

“You’re a lot easier to read than humans are,” you remark, then stuff another fry into your fry hole.

“heh. you’re right, i _haven’t_ made up my mind about it yet, an’ i’m glad it’s not up to me. i’m just doing tori a favor.” After a minute, he adds, “ _you_ think you all are gonna stuff us back down in there the second you figure out how?”

“I’m probably one of the worst people to ask,” you admit slowly. “Both in the predicting human behavior aspect, and the fact that I’m extremely personally invested in that _not_ happening.”

“don’t sell yourself short, bud.”

For some reason, that makes your face heat a little. Huh. Apparently you do care what he thinks of you.

Grillby arrives with the smooth regulars, which appear more or less like reddish clear alcohol topped with ice cubes in two large glass tumblers. They look like serious business.

“’preciate it, grillbz. sorry for giving you the workout today. here, let me make it up to you.” One of his hands emerges mittened from his hoodie and stuffs it rather familiarly into a pocket on Grillby’s pristine apron. A heavy metallic clink results. “my tab. maybe a lil extra.”

Grillby crackles loudly, a plume of soot bursting and disappearing at the top of his head. Hair? Sans throws back his head and laughs uproariously, giving you another view of his white neckbones. They look a lot cleaner, lately, and he doesn’t smell as much like bone shavings as he used to. Sans mimes wiping a tear from his socket as Grillby saunters off, although you don’t actually see any water. Or whatever it is that Sans produces.

“Do I even wanna know?” you inquire, smiling a little.

“ol’ grillbz’s working blue tonight, s’all,” he wheezes gently.

“think he mighta dipped into this-” he picks up his glass, “-since he had to go in the back to get it anyhow, but I don’t think it’d, um, translate very well.” He puts the rim of the glass to his teeth with a faint clink and tilts his head back.

You look down into your own glass, then pick it up and give it a sniff. “So what exactly does this stuff do?”

“makes ya feel warm n loose if you have enough,” he replies easily. “have too much and your head’ll be in the clouds tomorrow, but nothing permanent. on account of it’s not literal poison like the shit humans make.”

You raise an eyebrow at him, but take a sip of your drink. Cherries? Real ones, not burning-sweet like grenadine. Actually, it doesn’t burn at all, and you can see how easy it’d be to have too much of this.

“You don’t like human alcohol, then?”

He looks at you sidelong. “never had it, actually.” He smirks. “goes right through me.”

He might mean that literally, but you snort anyway.

“So, how much is too much?”

He sighs and figuratively eyeballs you closely. “for you? maybe three or four of those? don’t quote me on that, though. frisk can put away five or six.”

You take a long pull from your glass to cover your surprise. “Is Frisk... _old_ enough to drink? Wait, do laws even cover...um.” You look down into your glass and back over at Sans.

“Humans in general don’t really know this exists, do they?”

“nope,” he replies with a shiteating grin, eye lights glittering with amusement. “but you can’t wine n’ dine your mole without the wine, right?”

It’s your turn to throw your head back and laugh. “Wow, I really got the hookup now, I guess,” you sigh, feeling a warm glow of either acceptance or inebriation flow out from the middle of your chest. “And all I had to do was let you put me on your scooter and do espionage to me.”

“how’s it working out for ya?”

You blink slowly and take another long pull from your glass.

“Someone wants to show me a good time, I’m ready to look. Joke’s on you though,” you murmur, smiling. “I’m an open book. I would have told you anything you wanted to know parked on my couch, but now you’re out drinks and a dinner.”

He’s leaned back in the booth again, head tilted back and expression bemused again. Sometime when you weren’t watching, it looks like he’s emptied his own glass.

“this is better, though, right? s’nice to get out once in a while.”

You look at him suspiciously. “You know, I-” You cut off as two more monsters and a human walk in, see Sans, and start hollering something over at him. He just waves and gives a bony thumbs up, and they wander over to the bar as they see he’s got a companion. You laugh again.

“And here I had you pegged for a total sad sack,” you admit, then flush a little.

He bows his head and shakes with silent mirth, then looks up at you with squinted sockets. “Well, don’t revise your opinion too soon,” he practically gushes, pupils glittering with dangerous intent. “actually-you finished with that?” He nods his head at your mostly-empty plate. His is still more than half full, but you aren’t as hungry as you thought you were, either.

“Yeah,” you agree, waiting to see where this is going. To your surprise, he busses the table himself and heaves his broad-hipped frame awkwardly out of the booth.

“one more time, my main flame!” he hollers as he makes his way to the far end of the bar. “you still got my rainy day playlist?”

Looks like there’s a trash can and plate bins over there somewhere that he’s sorting out. Grillby flares a few times as he glides down behind the bar to where Sans is, then pops two more fat glasses onto the bar. Sans takes them carefully as he saunters back to your table.

“Hey, you don’t have to go all out, I’m telling you,” you protest and he sets another glass beside your half-full one. “I’m already feeling it.”

He laughs. “s’not me. these are on lola,” he indicates the furry person from earlier, who has collapsed their head back onto their arms as their friends chatter around them. “guess she’s _real_ glad to see me again. even if i’m not alone.”

“Huh,” you reply thoughtfully. “Everyone seems to really-” the background music stops suddenly, breaking your train of thought. Then, at a significantly increased volume, a familiar overwrought warbling fills the interior of the pub. A few of the patrons groan loudly and cast pained or accusatory glances at the skeleton across from you. One of them throws an empty fry basket, which he dodges without looking. It bounces off the back of the booth and hits the floor, where it is subsequently ignored.

 _Oh, Mother! I can feel…_  
_the soil falling over my heeead…._  
_as I climb into an empty bed..._

Sans is grinning so hard he looks like he would shit his pants if he had either.

“Still think I’m not a total sadsack?” he coos deeply, tracing his coaster with a bony fingertip.

You’re fucking losing it. You cover your face with both hands as your shoulders shake, and slowly you bend forward as tears start to leak out of your eyes.

You forgot The Smiths existed, but if you’re honest you kinda like them. Used to really hit the spot back when you were working and trying to slog your way through college, warring with professors every goddamned day over captions and other unnecessary bullshit. It’s like the soundtrack for feeling so sorry for yourself you start laughing, not in spite of but especially _because_ it’s so justified. The more everyone around you groans, the funnier it gets. Sans basically just pranked the whole bar on your behalf, and you’re not sure whether it’s to prove you right or wrong.

You lift your head and weakly wipe your eyes.

“Sans. You’re the _corniest_ dude I have _ever_ fucking met,” you moan, grabbing your first glass and draining it.

He’s got his broad, almost catlike face leaned on one hand, watching your helpless mirth with a perverse amount of interest.

“i dunno,” he drawls. “lotta people here would say i’m pretty amazing.”

m-a-i-z-e, he voluptuously fingerspells with his other hand.

You cover your eyes again in surrender. You can’t remember the last time you laughed this much.

“Fuck you,” you wheeze. “Dance with me, sad sack. We’re dancing now.”

“uh, I don’t really, uhhh-” he equivocates, eyes flickering briefly.

“Yeah, me neither. But you created this nightmare and I’m too gay and drunk to sit through it without revenge. Besides, I thought you were gonna pump me for information? Might be in your best interest to humor me, you know.”

He looks resigned, but slowly shuffle-slumps out of the booth again to where you’re already standing. You walk far enough away from the table to not bump into it, but you don’t walk out into the middle of the cleared space or anything like that.

Absolutely no one else is dancing. Perfect.

You look back at Sans, who’s standing there kinda awkwardly and seems like he’s bracing himself for something. Aww, now you feel bad. Not enough to sit back down, but you mentally adjust how much you plan to mess with him; you really didn’t mean to make him feel obligated. You set your hands very lightly on his shoulders, which feel hard and small under the layers of clothing he’s wearing but otherwise are just shoulders, and stay almost at arms’ length from him although you do bend your elbows slightly. He looks oddly and inexplicably relieved when your hands stay where they are. Definitely not touchy feely like his brother. You tuck that information away for the future.

He puts his hands very gingerly at your waist; you barely can tell they’re there. You just sort of...step around, slowly. You’re abysmal at this, and you don’t give a shit.

“i might have mistakenly assumed you were shy,” he mutters after a minute.

“Not particularly,” you reply with a snort. “I just have to be in the mood to put on pants and be somewhere loud. Which isn’t that often,” you admit.

“i’ve never been in that kinda mood,” he replies with restored humor, and you look down at his black mesh shorts with a smirk. However, you do notice for the first time in your presence he’s replaced his usual slippers with a pair of canvas sneakers. Huh.

“Are you actually wearing real shoes?”

“all shoes are real shoes,” he demurs with mock solemnity. Then he goes a little iridescent, continues in a half-whisper. “lost a slipper on my bike once. Had to strip em off real quick, shove it all in my pocket and get home barefoot to stay decent, heh,” he says even more quietly. “lucky I didn’t lose a toe.”

You’re baffled for a second, then you remember something.

“Oh,” you whisper almost subvocally. “the sock thing. I heard about that, I think.”

Apparently, since most monsters had no need or purpose for socks, they had acquired a bit of a risqué association among them, much like corsets or garter belts had among humans after daily wear became obsolete. Actually, the only reason you’d heard of it was because your sister had told you about a tabloid article involving the queen, Toriel, and some sort of sock collection. However, it seems like Sans probably _does_ need them to keep shoes on his feet, and if he needed the shoes to protect his foot bones...

He’s looking a little blue in the face, so you decide again to have mercy.

“A confession for a confession,” you say in at a more normal volume. “I’ll give you _my_ opinion on the whole thing. Though I get why most people would be, when it comes down to it I’m not really that interested in the political ramifications of what we’re doing at the university. I know that it’s important, and a lot of people are invested in what happens there. It’s not that I don’t care! It’s just-” you cut off as the song ends and another begins.

 _Park the car at the side of the road; you should know_  
_Time's tide will smother you...and I will too…_  
_When you laugh about people who feel so_  
_Very lonely_  
_Their only desire is to die..._

“Is this entire playlist all The Smiths? I didn’t realize you were capable of that kind of commitment.”

“nah, ‘course not,” he replies, then shoots you a wicked look. “some of it’s just morrissey.”

“Oh my god,” you guffaw. He looks like he’s regained his composure, at least.

“Anyway,” you continue with a sigh, “I really think I’ve had enough of that side of things. Explaining over and over to people who’re trying to find reasons not to understand. I don’t want to run around keeping secrets and breaking chains and rolling around in everything that’s happening all over the world all at once, and just fighting to keep my head above water. I had to fight like you probably _can_ believe, knowing you, just to get to wherever this is. I’ve already had more adventures than I care to,” you add, a bitter smile curving your lips as you continue.

“What’s the point of all the blood, sweat and tears carving out your slice of life if you can never sit down and just eat it? That’s where I’m at. I just wanna eat my slice, you know?”

You’ve been letting your eyes unfocus somewhere over his shoulder as you talk, but now you glance into his face and note that his eye lights have gotten a little wider, fuzzy. Hmm, maybe he’s feeling the monster drinks, too.

“so why go back to classes if you’re not interested anymore?” he murmurs up at you. “what’s in it for you?”

The song continues, and you finally remember what it’s called.

 _But that joke isn’t funny anymore_  
_It’s too close to home and it’s too near the bone_  
_Too close to home, too near the bone_

Of course he’s grinning about that, seeing you notice. Good lord, his depravity knows no depths. Your smile softens as you continue.

“Just because I’m not out there tearing it up doesn’t mean I stopped being _curious_ ,” you answer slowly. “And for me, it’s actually fun. I’m curious to just sort of...meet myself, maybe occupy the space I’m in a little more each day. Instead of always fighting for the _right_ to be who I am, now I can learn to just _be_ who I am. And maybe that’s what I’m curious about? What that means for me, here and now.”

“I’m ready to follow where it takes me without having to force my way through so much conflict. But I’m not like some people. It’s like without the fighting and pushback, they don’t know who they are anymore or how they fit in the world. Seems kinda sad to me. Even though so much good is happening, they just can’t let go of anything that might be less than perfect. If there isn’t more fight, they’ll make it themselves. They don’t know how to stop fighting long enough to enjoy what they’ve been fighting _for_. Especially if you’re fighting for your life-once you do that, aren’t you sort of obligated to actually _live_ it?”

You swallow as you realize you’ve been monologuing, and when you look back at Sans, his eye lights are so diffuse you wonder if something’s wrong with him. You also notice that his drink has appeared in one hand, and he’s tilting his head back and draining the glass. You didn’t even feel him take his hand off your waist, and you’re not that close to your table...well. Whatever.

“Uh, sorry,” you try, managing not to step on his foot. Barely. “It’s not actually that deep.”

He makes that throat-clearing noise again. “no, it’s...”

His eye lights come back together a little more. “you’re not like most humans, are you?”

You frown. “How would you know? Frisk says you don’t spend much time around us anyway, and there’s like, literally billions of us.”

His eyes flicker away from you. “point taken.”

You exhale in amusement. “Maybe _you_ could stand to be a little more curious. Speaking of which, how does monster alcohol even work? Where does it go, if it doesn’t affect your body?”

“it doesn’t affect _your_ body,” he clarifies. His empty cup is back on the table when you glance over, but at this point you’re getting used to his bullshit.

“basically...you’re made up of cells, or whatever, and those cells are made of molecules, atoms, and smaller particles than even that...physical stuff.”

“Okay.”

“this goes where the particles aren’t.”

“Um...” you trail off. “What?”

The bouncy bassline of ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’ starts, and you break up suddenly. “Nope,” you laugh, and drop your hands from his shoulders. They feel a little sweaty, actually, and you wipe them on your jeans. “Even I can’t pretend to dance to this. I can’t do it.”

He grins and follows you back to the booth, and somehow he has a third (fourth?) drink in his hand as he sits. He actually seems almost reluctant to quit the dancing now. It strikes you as odd, since he was so weird about getting up to dance in the first place.

“Okay, so what the hell were you saying about particles?”

“heh,” his eye sockets look like half moons laying on their flat sides as he leans back and gets comfortable. You grab your second drink and take a long pull, the sweetness flooding your mouth and refreshing you after your pleasantly minimal exertions.

“so, this-” he holds up his already half-empty glass, “-goes where subatomic particles aren’t. No matter how small you go, even when things look like they’re touching, they’re really not. there’s always space between. we say ‘touching’ but really stuff’s just close enough to react to each other, that’s what touching is. but there’s always the space.”

You find yourself leaning to the side and watching him talk, pillowing your head on a bent arm. You don’t feel sleepy or anything though, and you’re following what he’s saying just fine. You’re just extraordinarily...relaxed.

“this-” he leans forward, holding his glass tumbler up to catch the light and narrowing one socket at it, “-goes in there.”

You gaze at the lovely reddish color of the liquid. “So, the atoms or whatever in that, they go-”

He’s shaking his head with a smile. “no particles in here.”

You blink. “Uh. How’s that possible? Isn’t all matter made up of...matter?”

“you know anything about continuum mechanics?”

You cackle. “Probably only jack and shit.”

He breathes a quiet laugh, and his eye sockets close a little further and he brandishes the glass again, takes a sip.

“s’like, this is all one piece. no spaces. the substance of the object completely fills the space it occupies. so this is _one_ object. but-” he takes your glass and pours a little drop into his own, “-this is _still_ one object.”

He drinks, then holds the glass up again. “still one.”

“I get what you’re saying,” you say, a little surprised that you actually do, “but where did it _go_?”

“the spaces between the particles.”

You blink at that for a solid five seconds.

“But, what’s _in_ there, that it’s affecting? Another ‘one object’? Between the, the particles?”

he gives you a sincerely baffled look. “you really don’t know?”

Another five seconds, then…

“This is going in my _soul_?!” you yelp, and you hear a few titters from the other patrons. It’s actually gotten a lot more crowded without you noticing, and you blush a little under their surreptitious looks.

“well, yeah,” he replies, drains his glass and then of all things, pulls a ballpoint pen out of his pocket and grabs a coaster, starts scribbling on it. You just sit back, sip, and watch him go.

“s’like, you have two kinds of stuff, right? particles and continuums. They _can_ interact but right now they don’t.”

Tiny, rounded symbols are starting to fill up the blank side of the thick paper coaster, some lines...a blob?

“s’not a displacement, exactly, more like a change in configuration, ya call it a deformation but s’not bad like it sounds,” as he adds another, even blobbier blob, a diagonal line, a few more notations.

“deformation causes changes, two things kinda becomes the same one thing.” He slides the coaster across the table to you, sockets ovaling happily, and you pick it up.

You’re staring at a mathematical equation about the size of your palm, with several symbols in it separated by lines that you’re 90% sure you’ve never seen before, and you’ve had to transcribe entire textbooks for your work.

“y’know, like that,” he emphasizes vaguely, reaching across to tap the blobbier blob with the tip of the pen.

You stare another second at the equation that means what happens when your soul gets drunk on matter that isn’t matter, which happens when it goes into the spaces between subatomic particles. You set down the coaster with a small smile and say, “I kinda feel like an asshole right now.”

His eye lights shrink and his grin flattens. “huh? why?”

“What do you do for a living, Sans?” you ask gently.

“not that,” he replies shortly, seeming to realize what you’re getting at. Good, you can be subtle when you’re trying really, really hard. Sans is surprisingly easy to be honest with, and he doesn’t seem annoyed you’ve apparently underestimated him. In fact, he looks like he’s enjoying himself quite a bit.

He taps the figure with the pen again. “this kinda smart? it’s bullshit. worthless.”

You take another drink. “How so?”

He sighs thoughtfully. “that kinda smart… it isn’t _real_. s’like what you were saying earlier. Certain kindsa people, they don’t know the difference between a good time and a bad time. there is no difference, not for them; just more data. good or bad, who cares s’long as it’s _more_.”

His gaze focuses back on you. “people like that can’t let anything go, or they just gobble it up, don’t even taste it. they can’t have a good time, even though that’s the only thing that matters. s’the only thing that stays _real_ , no matter what. heh.”

You’re not sure when you started grinning, but it feels amazing for some reason so you keep at it.

“I think this is the best time I’ve ever had,” you reply.

He looks extremely dubious.

“It’s tied with about ten other best times,” you admit, “but they’re not ranked. This is definitely up there with the time I took a week off to get my wisdom teeth out, popped a fistful of vicodin and played a super mario brothers 3 ROM for 12 hours straight, five days in a row” you sigh wistfully. “got paid for the whole week, too, and didn’t crack a book, leave the house, or take a message once til it was over. drinking cold condensed chicken noodle right out of the can,” you finish, making a ‘C’ shaped holding motion with your empty hand and gazing at it through a truly nostalgic haze. A strangled sound makes you look up sharply.

Oh, it’s just Sans losing his shit at you again, and your grin comes back easily...or maybe it never left. You think you’re starting to get a better handle on what his whole deal is. He’s got his arms wrapped around his head while his shoulders shake, and one of his sleeves has ridden up to reveal a gleamingly white ulna and radius. You think about how their inexplicably lustrous gleam can be possible while you wait for him to collect himself.

“this has gone in a very unexpected direction,” he coughs out after a little while.

“You’re too sloshed to drive us back, aren’t you?” you ask.

He finally lifts his head and winks at you. “yep,” he replies, “but i’ll get you home anyhow, k?”

You narrow your eyes at him suspiciously, but trying to stop smiling doesn’t work.

“what?” he says. “s’not that weird.”

“It absolutely _is_ that weird,” you gripe. “I think we covered how I feel about adventures?”

He wiggles his way back out of the booth yet again, and you pick up your bag with a sigh and stand as well.

“not an adventure,” he mumbles amiably. “just a shortcut.”

Sans nods and winks sloppily at Grillby as you follow him towards a door past the far end of the bar that you would assume leads to the back kitchen. He slows as you approach, then he turns to you and extends his bony left hand, unmittened, and gestures for you to take it.

Oh. You realize you’ve never actually touched his bare...bones? Before. Since he seems to be pretty weird about being touched in general, it feels like an oddly trusting gesture.

“If I throw up, it’ll be your fault,” you say, trying to cover up your sudden discomfiture.

“it’s already my fault, but you won’t,” he says simply, hitching his hand at your again. You take it into yours, palm against palm, and it sure is interesting. Really smooth, and hard. Not especially cold or warm. And there’s something very resonant about his touch, not like a pulse or even electricity, but it’s almost magnetic in a way. Alive. Maybe you shouldn’t have finished that second drink, because you’re feeling a little...wiggly. Fizzy?

“close your eyes, though,” he says, and you do with an aggrieved sigh. You feel him pull you forward a little, hear the door open and then shut, then you take another step. For a second you feel something that stops short of vertigo, almost like being on an especially swift elevator. The air changes, and the noise from the bar seems almost sucked out of your ears.

You open your eyes, and you’re in your own foyer, presumably with the door still locked behind you. You let go of his hand quickly, and lean against the back of your couch to fumble off your shoes and carelessly drop your bag. You walk around, lean backwards, the armrest of your couch behind your knees, and just let yourself fall back with a satisfied grunt.

Sans is peering down at you over the back of the couch, grinning.

“The equation for _that_ trick fit on a coaster?” you inquire idly up at him.

“no idea,” he replies evenly, seeming pretty comfortable to stay just where he is. Well, no skin off your ass, you think silently, and laugh at the idea of skeleton butts a little. You think about inviting him to sit, but something occurs to you before you say anything. He’d had no problem making himself at home in slippers before, but he’s got sneakers on now, and you’d called them “real shoes.” Oh. He probably noticed you don’t wear shoes in the house, doesn’t want to offend you by getting his shoe germs all over your floor, but also doesn’t want to take his off. The sock thing. Oh, boy. Here comes culture clash.

Well, you’re not going to ask him about that, but you also don’t want the night to be over quite yet. He doesn’t seem inclined to take off immediately, and you’re feeling pretty comfortable. Still fizzy. Oh, well. It’s really nice to be back somewhere so dim and quiet, and additionally nice to not be alone. You realize eventually you’re burning with curiosity, about him, about whatever the hell that just was...but you don’t actually want to interrogate him. It’s not fun, giving or receiving.

Instead of asking for something, you decide to offer up something instead.

“It was easy for me to jump to conclusions about _you_ being lonely, because I’m the one who’s lonely,” you say softly, looking up at the grinning skull above you. From the way he’s holding his shoulders, looks like his hands are back in his pockets. It makes you think about what holding his hand felt like. His expression softens, but keeps its smile.

“i had a good time with you,” he replies. You know that, but it makes you feel good for him to have said so. A fair trade.

“Can I ask you a question you don’t have to answer?” you venture hesitantly. “And if you _really_ don’t like it, you can just leave, no hard feelings.”

“i asked you questions all night, s’only fair.”

You smile a little, but don’t look at him.

“So, when monsters, uh, show their souls to people. That’s...an intimate thing?”

An amused exhale. “yup,” he answers shortly.

“I thought so,” you admit quietly, thinking about seeing your own soul. Thinking about how it would be if someone else saw some of what you could about yourself. That’d be pretty intense.

“But with feelings, I guess. Can you..?” you trail off, blushing.

“i’m not uncomfortable,” he says above you. “you can look at me if you want, i won’t melt.”

You do, and it helps for some reason.

“Can you touch someone else’s soul?”

He nods slowly, still smiling.

“Do you touch each other when you do?”

At that, he glances away sharply.

“See!” you say emphatically, but still quietly. “ _That’s_ why I’m uncomfortable. I literally don’t know what I’m asking. I don’t know what there is to know about it, and I have every reason to want to be careful.”

He looks back at you, expression unreadable. “do ya?”

You blink at him, surprised. “Obviously?” He seems to be waiting for more, so you add, “Because I don’t want you to feel bad? Or bothered? My ignorance isn’t your personal responsibility,” you add clearly, glad that the monster alcohol doesn’t seem to affect your faculties the same way human booze does. You just feel a lot more relaxed and comfortable than you normally would. Maybe a little giddy, too.

His pupils become more diffuse while he thinks about that. After a minute, he actually pulls his hands out of his pockets and folds his arms across the top of the couch, sighs. Rests his chin on them, which oddly doesn’t affect his speech at all.

“not all monsters _can_ touch each other the way you’re talking about.” You think about that.

“Do you need to be in love?”

He almost laughs at that, you can tell, but he doesn’t. You appreciate it.

“more like...”

He gazes at the wall for a solid ten seconds, then seems to come to an unexpected decision.

“me’n grillbz used to go upstairs after closing sometimes,” he says quietly.

You feel your face relax in surprise. Not that it happened, but that he’s telling you about it.

He lifts his chin, scratches it in thought.

“some days you just need to know someone would notice if you weren’t there anymore. might even look forward to seein’ ya. that’s not everything, but it’s still important.”

He pulls his sleeve back for a moment, showing you his wrist and the beginning of his arm bones. They almost seem to glow in the dim light, but really they’re just very pale.

“that’s not fur or scales, but at some point it’s still _flammable_ ,” he says almost delicately.

“I see,” you say, feeling like you’re picking up what he’s putting down.

His face gets a little iridescent again as he stares at the wall a little fixedly.

“at… at _some_ point.” he adds tightly. “after a while.”

“eh,” he mumbles, looking like he’s trying to figure out what to say. How much to say, maybe.

“but with your soul out, you _can’t_ make that kinda mistake,” he continues, sounding disturbed. “not like human stuff, grab first and ask how it felt later. y’can’t not _care_.”

Oh. Oh, no.

He exhales, then looks back at you.

“aw, geez,” he says with chagrin, grin flattened. “i’m givin’ you the wrong idea.”

He runs his hand over the back of his skull, making a soft rasping noise. “nothing like _that_ happened. it’s just...just not my speed, maybe.” His face gets a little weird. “you...know I don’t even have the _parts_ for that, right?”

You unthinkingly make a slang gesture that means something between ‘i pretty much figured’, ‘that makes sense’, and ‘of course’; you’re trying to revise and choose a phrase to speak aloud when you realize the weird look has left his face and he seems more relaxed. You guess he understood. Huh.

“Souls _aren’t_ flammable, then,” you say quietly, rather than asking anything else about whatever kinds of experiences he’s had with humanity.

That brings a smile to his face, and he looks down at you like you’re sharing a joke.

“not mine, anyways,” he says with a wink. “lucky me.”

You chuckle quietly, and you’re both smiling again.

“It’s nice to feel lucky,” you say, the good glow from earlier smoothing over any fears you had about making it weird. Well, actually it _is_ weird, but it doesn’t feel bad. Now you’re just sort of looking at each other, and you can tell you’re both a lot more curious than you expected to be.

There are so many questions tugging at you from the inside, tugging at...your soul? Is that where that feeling comes from? Is that where your desire to know more about other people, to know more about yourself, comes from? After touching your own soul, you feel like you know a lot more about yourself. What would touching someone _else’s_ soul feel like? You can barely imagine.

And that’s just one question on top of so many others churning inside you. What does he really do for a living if anything, if he even needs to, and how does he spend his time? When did he get so good at explaining things to people, souls and quantum physics alike? Has he ever considered going into teaching? What was it like to see the sun for the first time? Would _he_ be willing to sit in on a Soul Studies meeting? Can the two of you do this again sometime?

But if there’s one thing you know by now, it’s that holding on to a good moment too long, even one as good as this, you can end up strangling it. You eventually just have to let it go, remember it fondly, and hope for the next one. Find enough faith to believe it’ll come.

You realize, even as you see at least as many unspoken questions looking back at you from the dark sockets above, there’s only one question that really matters. So you smile hesitantly, and ask.

“Will you be my friend?”

The pips of his eyes flicker sharply, and he looks...you’re not sure. Can shock be soft?

“yeah,” he sighs tightly, voice a little strange. “i already am.”

You exhale, and it feels like some unspecified tension drains out of you and gets replaced with sleepiness.

“Then, I feel lucky, too,” you say, then stand up and walk around the couch without looking at him again. Your eyes burn a little. This has been a little more emotionally intense than you bargained for, in a different way than you anticipated.

“I’m going to bed now,” you add softly, then lean against the banister heavily as you trudge up the stairs to brush your teeth.

“goodnight,” you hear, and although nothing changes, you know that he’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to clarify the worldbuilding: the idea here is that the human world runs on quantum mechanics (discrete particles) and monster bodies, souls, magic, food, and other stuff runs on continuum mechanics.  
> you don't have to understand either, and there won't be a quiz. it's just the kind of thing i think is fun, because i have very questionable taste.  
> If you'd like to get an idea of what that coaster looked like: http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Engineering/Courses/En221/Notes/Fluids/Fluids.htm


	8. loose threads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [New Order - Age Of Consent](https://youtu.be/8ahU-x-4Gxw)

You: Hey, so I have some G that Papyrus gave me. I’m not sure what a good place to spend it would be. He thought I should ask you about a good place to buy a new outfit?

the kid: ok be right there. Papyrus is at work but Sans let me borrow his bike

You look down and your phone and sigh, rub your forehead. Are you ever going to learn your lesson? You gather up your things and put the pouch with the coins you’d been gifted into your jeans pocket. You’d examined the coins inside, oblong and smaller than you’re used to. You’d assumed it had mostly been a token gift, but the coins in the pouch look different than the monster currency you’d seen previously. After showing the coins to Chell in an attempt to find out more, you’d discovered each metal bit actually counts as 50G. There are 30 of them.

When Frisk arrives, you invite them in but they shake their head. “I think I know just the place,” they gesture, then turn and just walk toward the bike. Well, okay then. The balance on the Vespa is a little harder to find with the extra weight on it, but it ends up being fine, although you feel a little tense during a particularly sharp left turn. You let your mind drift as Frisk predictably steers the bike toward the downtown monster district.

Being back at work, having that sort of structure, has actually helped you more than you were expecting. Even after Frisk’s aborted lecture, Soul studies still continues to meet although you haven’t been back there yet. And every time you’ve tried to get together with Bob, she’s avoided you, so you’re pretty sure that lead’s a no-go.

Although your text message hadn’t been meant as a request for a shopping trip of this kind, you’re just as glad they scooped you up for it. You don’t plan to press them too hard, but at the very least you’re hoping you can get a few of your questions answered. After all, you’ve been very patient, if you do say so yourself.

It only takes about 15 minutes before they pull up to the curb, and the door they lead to you is red and has a lovely inset paned window, but is otherwise unmarked. Huh. You wouldn’t have known this was even a shop, but when you walk in, the whole place is full of extremely colorful clothing and accessories. The space is small, but the hangers go all the way up to the ceiling. Everything about it screams “boutique”, and you touch your pocket, hoping it isn’t too expensive. You were hoping to have some left over to buy some extra monster food with, since it seems like one of the things that really helps whatever’s going on with your soul. You’ve been trying to strategize a way to make it so half the food you eat is actually magic, or “half-madge”, as your human rheumatologist calls it.

The lion monster behind what looks more like a desk than a counter looks up from their book when you enter, but they don’t say anything or stand, just nod at Frisk before going back to it. It’s another way that monster businesses differ from human ones; there are no advertisements and not much signage around, even. Just displayed clothing and a lion wearing a vintage-style housedress with a flared circle skirt. Their mane doesn't appear to be styled or contained in any particular way, but rather flows both outward and down in a flattering manner.

Frisk turns to you and gestures, “So, what kind of clothes do you like? This place has a little bit of everything, and I usually find something I like every time I come here.”

You glance over at a rack with what look like long sweaters on it. “I usually don’t,” you gesture back silently, enjoying the quiet ambience of the little boutique. “I don’t usually care about clothes all that much, but I feel like Papyrus will be disappointed if I don’t report back on his recommendation,” you finish, eyes crinkling with amusement.

Frisk seems humored by that, too.

“Yeah, if he gave you an assignment, you should probably carry it out.” Their narrow eyes glance to the side. “You like the sweaters? They’re really soft.”

You walk together to the rack of sweaters you’d been eyeballing, but feel like you need a disclaimer. “I already have way too many sweaters, and not a lot of everything else. I guess...I don’t know? I just put on whatever, most of my clothes are just old and comfortable. I like thrift shops, I don’t buy a lot of stuff new.”

Frisk smiles thoughtfully for a second, then seems to come to a decision.

“So, you know Papyrus has been working on your painting, right?”

You gesture acknowledgement, then finger the long sleeve of a teal cardigan. It is really soft, and you wonder what it’s made of. You think about asking, but if it’s another secret, you don’t want to make things awkward, so you don’t.

“Well, usually when he finishes a new work, he likes to get everyone together to give them a chance to show it off. We usually go to Mom’s house for that, since it’s big, and...well. We’re big,” they gesture, smiling a little. “And Undyne needs a lot of room to be Undyne, especially when she’s around Papyrus.” Frisk’s grinning now.

You just nod, wondering how much the sweater costs. It’s really close to your absolute favorite color.

“You should get a new outfit, and wear it for that,” Frisk signs.

You look up, frowning. Then you drop the fabric to clarify.

“Wait...are you saying there’s going to be like, an _art show_ that I’m supposed to show up at? Because it’s...my painting?” Uh oh. That’s really not your thing.

Frisk is already waving you down, though.

“No, no it’s like...more like a family...party?” They look to the side doubtfully. “Not even a party. Like...I don’t know. It’s just us, though.”

“Who’s ‘us’?” you ask hesitantly.

“Um... me, Papyrus, Sans, Mom, MK...Undyne and Alphys...Mettaton and sometimes Asgore-” they cut off at the look on your face.

“That’s a lot of people. Uh, important people,” you reply weakly.

Frisk’s face falls a little, but they try to hide it.

“You don’t have to go, it’s not required or anything!” they sign, trying to make it bright but just ending sporting a crooked, unconvincing smile. “The painting’s still yours.” Considering they’re technically a diplomat, you’d think they would have a better poker face. When you think about it...maybe they do, but not for situations this frivolous.

And it occurs to you, you are being a little bit frivolous about this yourself. Is it really that big of a deal? And you know Papyrus probably wouldn’t pressure you if he knew you really didn’t want to go, but he would be disappointed. Awww. Imagining his disappointment is almost unbearable, like seeing someone spend all day baking a cake, decorating it perfectly and then just chucking the whole thing into the garbage.

“No, I’ll-I’ll go. But...” You chew your lips for a minute. “I really need your help picking something out.”

They nod, seeming cheered.

“You like being covered up, right?” They look at your clothing, which is more or less another version of the outfit you always wear; jeans, long t shirt or smock-dress, button up sweater or sometimes a hoodie overtop. Layers underneath, making your shape vague.

“But it’s getting close to summer, and you never know when exactly Papyrus will decide his work’s finished. So maybe you’ll want something with a lighter fabric?” They walk towards one of the back corners of the shop and you follow, trying not to think how much time’s passed already this year. Losing a month really messes up your sense of timing and seasonality, apparently. You take out a small bottle of water from your bag, mouth a little dry.

Frisk darts their eyes toward you surreptitiously, turns toward you. “I’ve been thinking about the Soul Studies thing,” they gesture, almost clipped. Wow, here we go, you guess. Your eyes automatically go to the store’s clerk, or owner or whatever, but they seem to still be absorbed in whatever they’re reading.

“Sans told me you pretty much figured out what I can do,” they say slowly, eyes downcast under their thick, blunt bangs. Maybe its just the lighting in the store, but they look awfully sallow all of a sudden.

“I’m not sure ‘figured out’ can be applied in any way to whatever’s going on,” you admit. You think back over the past weeks, including what had apparently become “hot dog nite” with Sans, although it ends up being twice a week rather than any specific day. Just whenever you’re both in the mood to loaf. He’s still the reigning champion of deflection, although every once in a while he really manages to surprise you with a steaming delivery of hot info, like the time he’d just told you that Toriel and King Asgore used to be married to each other, a very long time ago.

“thought everyone knew that,” he’d shrugged, and shoved another ‘dog between his teeth. “they’re both boss monsters. and both...goats. y’know.” When you’d asked him to explain what the hell a “boss monster” was supposed to be, he’d just shrugged again, and you couldn’t get anything else out of him. It made sense in retrospect, considering they’re the king and queen, although it’s been made increasingly obvious what whatever system the monsters have going on is a lot different than any human monarchy. Asgore and Toriel had gone to some pretty great lengths to demonstrate that they in no way, shape or form were a couple, so eventually everyone just had to accept it.

Frisk is looking at you oddly, and you try to bring your mind back to the conversation at hand.

“Sorry,” you gesture tightly. “My mind...tends to wander a bit lately.”

They sigh, eyes darting with intense thoughts you can’t really imagine.

“You...think humans should know more about souls. Right?” You don’t think that had been what they were going to say, but it’s definitely relevant to your interests.

“I understand why it’s been a good idea to keep a lot of information about monster resources a secret up to now, but I have to say I don’t necessarily understand the secrecy around souls. They’re not a...” you trail off, feeling a little sick. “Good lord, they’re not a _resource_ , right??” If this is some sort of Soylent Green situation, you think you might just nope the fuck off this planet right now.

“No, no, it’s not like that,” they’re already gesturing, and you feel a little relief. “Well,” they amend, “spiders have some interesting...practices. But!” They rush to reassure you. “That’s not where monster...goods come from. It’s...”

They sigh again. “It’s not like I can tell you without...telling you.” They look frustrated. “Why don’t we just do the shopping, then go...have lunch?” they look up hopefully. “And we can actually talk sitting down, instead of just standing here til our legs go numb.”

You nod, then finally look at the wall of clothing in front of you.

“what about these?” Frisk prompts, then takes down a pair of loose, flowing trousers in a dark green color, and what looks like an embroidered tunic in black.

“Those seem a little fancy for me,” you reply dubiously, but when they hand them over, you take them so they can answer.

“You don’t think it’s okay to have something fancy? Why not just try them on and see how you feel about it?”

You look around for something resembling a fitting room, but Frisk takes your hand in their slightly sweaty one and pulls you toward the desk where the lion monster sits. Their grubbiness reminds you of how young they still are in a lot of ways.

Frisk greets the monster at the desk, then requests a fitting room, which turns out to be the door half-obscured by even more racks of clothing in the shop’s tight space, a few steps away from the desk. You notice that the book the monster had been reading is actually a sort of thick playbill; the desk is covered with what look like craft and trade magazines, a romance novel, and several measuring tapes.

You go into the small fitting room, strip off your outerwear but not the undershorts and layered tank tops underneath, then pull on the flowing trousers and tunic. The mirror shows you that they’re a lot more flattering than you’d thought they would be. They even make you look a little...taller? Huh. Most outfits like this you’ve tried on just make you look like a sad cabbage with a human head. The embroidery on the top actually matches the color of the pants in some places, and you enjoy the symmetry of that. The sleeves are long, just like you like, and the fabric doesn’t cling to you at all. You look sort of like a cool, decorative column. Hmm.

You change back and bring the clothes out, and see Frisk’s face fall a little. Oh. Maybe they’d expected you to come out wearing it for their opinion, you realize belatedly, and blush. Whoops. Yeah. You really have forgotten how to act around people. You’re lucky the...skeleton household? Had aggressively decided to befriend you, if you’re this out of practice just going shopping with someone. Yeesh.

“Sorry,” you gesture. “But, um. I’ll take it? And then...” ugh, you hope it’s not too expensive, you don’t even know how much they cost, “...I’ll have a big reveal?” You try to drum up some enthusiasm to make up for your lack of friendship skills. “At the party? So everyone can see my new clothes at the same time.” Sure, that sounds good, right?

Well, Frisk grins at you and nods, so you suppose it’s good enough.

The outfit Frisk has chose ends up costing about 600G, and you wince a little but figure that’s about what you’d expected. And you’ve still got 900 to spend on food, or whatever you like.

You both thank the shopkeep, who’s already picking their book back up, and exit the shop.

“So, where should we go to eat?” you ask.

“Wanna just go to Grillby’s?” Frisk gestures with a shrug. “It’s right over there.”

You stop short and blink, looking across the street where Frisk is pointing. When you squint down at the next block, you see the edifice you remember from your “date” with Sans. Huh.

“Uh, sure,” you reply. You heft the bag with the clothing in it, and glance at the bike at the curb. It still had the pod on the back. “I think I can walk if I don’t have to carry this,” you gesture with it looped on your wrist.

Instead of offering to put it in the trunk, they just take it from you and head toward the pub. You shrug and follow them willingly enough. You’re feeling fatigued today, but it’s not too bad. The pain’s not bad, either, and you’re hoping another round of monster food will perk you up.

Frisk pushes open the door, and as your eyes adjust to the dimness you notice there aren’t too many patrons this early. Grillby’s still there behind the bar, and to your surprise, Frisk just walks right up and hops up onto one of the stools, setting the bag on the counter and leans forward, turns their head to look at you over their shoulder.

Pats the seat next to them with a smile.

“Can I get two specials?” Frisk gestures at the thin, vest-clad elemental across the bar. A hiss and a crackle, and he just heads down past the bar and into the back. As you walk up to the stool, thankful that it’s a lot lower than most barstools you’re familiar with, you notice the only other patron appears to be Lola. You remember the drunk furry person with long ears buying you and Sans a round the last time you’d been here. She also appears to be heavily unconscious, so you’re basically alone.

Frisk turns to you. “Souls aren’t a resource exactly, not the way you mean, but humans knowing more about them could put monsters at risk.” Okay, just getting right to it, then. It’s obvious Frisk feels very comfortable here...and Grillby’s still in the back. Maybe this is some kind of unofficial conference site for the Ambassador.

They look thoughtful.

“One thing I never considered is that ignorance of souls could put humans at risk. Why would it? After all, they were fine for millennia, forgot everything.” Their expression changes, grows distant. Detached.

“Maybe if I had known, even then. I might not have cared. But,” their eyes dart at you, and they look a little upset. “Then, you...” they trail off.

“Another thing I didn’t realize is that the barrier coming down didn’t just change things for monsters. And it didn’t only affect, um… there are other effects,” they say hurriedly, as if they don’t want to be seen.

You catch their eye. “Humans used to be able to do magic, right? Otherwise they couldn’t have made the barrier in the first place. And that’s what you’re worried about.”

They tilt their hand ambiguously, then tuck the longer part of their hair behind an ear, rub their chin.

“But you can do magic,” you argue, “and I don’t know why. I don’t know what that means, for all this. For humanity.”

Frisk’s eyes go hard.

“Would you trust humanity with something that dangerous? The way things are, even now?”

You sigh, the frustration leaving you.

“You shouldn’t have to make these kinds of decisions,” you say sadly. “Much less eleven years ago.”

Frisk’s eyes harden even further, for some reason.

“Did you ever wonder how I got to the underground?” they remark in short, clipped gestures. You blink rapidly in surprise.

“People don’t _come back_ from Mt Ebott,” they continue before you can respond. “So why would someone go there?” Frisk reaches up to their scalp, parts their hair carefully with their fingers. That’s...a really big scar. You’d never have seen it by accident, though, and it’s very...it actually dips in, in the middle.

“I’m lucky i’m not blind, too,” they gesture after a moment. “And no. It’s not from my fall.”

You swallow, sit with that a moment.

“I wish I didn’t have to make these decisions. It’s too much. I _hate_ it,” they emphasize, eyes glittering again. “But I’ve been making decisions like that for longer than I can remember. Literally,” they add with finality, no longer looking at you. They just sort of hunch there over the counter.

You touch their arm lightly, and they turn their eyes but not their head.

“What do you want to ask me?” you say gently.

Now they turn to you a little more.

“Do you think humans need to know more about how their souls work? Will we be able to survive that? Any of us?”

You lift you hand, answer slowly.

“I don’t know if I’m the right person to ask.” You take a deep breath. “I’m really mired in all of this. And if I don’t learn more, I might not...survive? Everything about this affects me directly. Maybe it’s even worse than that. You see?” You meet their eyes evenly. “I don’t even know what could happen to me because of this. That’s how much I don’t know.”

Frisk looks at you incredulously.

“That’s why you’re the only person I _can_ ask about this.” Their hands move slow, punctuated. “The only one worth asking. You already...” they still their fingers. “A lot of lives are on the line, and I don’t know what to do. I need help, and. You were right.” They look down. “I don’t know many humans. I don’t...”

They meet your eyes, baffled. “You’re affected by this, so that makes your opinion important to me. Will you think about it, and let me… know? What you think?”

“Yes,” you gesture, since there’s no other answer you could possibly give, faced with this.

They shiver, sigh heavily, but they sound relieved.

“Can I ask you something, though?” They nod.

“What does a blue soul mean? Dark blue?”

Their eyes fall a bit at the outside corners.

“Integrity,” they fingerspell, leaving no room for confusion.

Wow. You didn’t expect to feel so...conflicted about that. You swallow dryly, then fish out your bottle of water and take a sip, never mind that you’re...in a restaurant. Bar? Whatever. The knowledge settles on you strangely, and you both sit in silence.

Then, Grillby pushes open the door beside the bar carrying two plates with burgers on them, and it breaks the spell. He sets both down with a flourish, and you thank him, but he’s already heading back down and whipping out a bartowel and wiping at some glasses.

You look down at your plate, open the bun. Frown.

“So is this like...meat?” you ask weakly. After the whole 'resource' conversation earlier, you’re maybe a little more squeamish. No, you’re sure it’s...fine.

Frisk looks over at you. “No? It’s a plant.”

You look down again, notice the texture is a lot like the hot dogs Sans brings you. Hmm. Smells a little better though. Charred? Broiled? You glance over at Grillby, and Frisk giggles at you, surprising you since there’s a little more voice behind it than usual. Then Frisk offers you a bottle of ketchup, and an oddly nostalgic look crosses their face as you take it.

You shut up and eat your burger, and it’s fucking delicious. You’re glad Frisk recommended you both eat here. As you gaze at the wall of bottles, you notice that most of them appear to be human brands you recognize. You think about what Sans had said about Frisk putting away six glasses of monster booze wonderingly for a while, trying to remotely imagine what that would be like. Then you glance to the side when you hear Frisk’s huffing laugh again.

Grillby had come back over without you noticing, and Frisk is signing rapidly, while Grillby pops and crackles. Frisk throws their had back and guffaws, surprising you again. Their laugh has a quality you’re familiar with, from Deaf and HoH people who can’t hear their own voice very well. You still aren’t sure how much hearing they do or don't have, but if their lack of verbal speech and deafness was caused by a traumatic brain injury, then it’s likely a lot more complicated than that.

“The burgers are on the house,” Frisk signs, wiping away actual tears of mirth. “He says ‘anyone who can force Sans to slow dance in public to his own bad jokes is welcome here anytime,’” they add, and crack up again. “I wish I had seen it,” they add weakly, and they and Grillby go back to their conversation while you finish eating.

You hope your dark complexion and bowed head are hiding your blush.


	9. that feeling, you can only say what it is in french

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Radiohead - Go To Sleep](https://youtu.be/Fe6X9fLLp0Y)

When you wake up a week later, your eyes burn, and you have a sinking feeling that it’s not going to be a good time.

An hour later, you send a message to the office to let them know you’re not going to be making it in today.

After your fourth hour crying nonstop, you finally give in and text Sans while you still have enough vision to do so. You don’t want to, but at this point it seems necessary since you obviously can’t get a handle on this.

You have no clue why, although your brain has already tried to supply multiple rationalizations for your insistent despair and uncontrollable weeping: stress, loneliness, previous traumas, a social interaction with a barista from seven years ago that had been awkward, or maybe you just finally are losing your mind for real. But in the end, the confusion itself makes you think it might be somehow related to your more recent issues. After all, if you’re soul’s out of whack, it stands to reason it’d be wreaking havoc on your emotions, too. Right?

Sans isn’t actually your first choice, but he comes in at a solid third. Vulkin had just been here yesterday, after all, and you’re not really sure this is the kind of thing she can or is willing to help with. You haven’t been asking for- soul services? ugh, no matter how you think of it, it sounds super questionable- every session, but yesterday’s had been a little more intense than usual.

You’d gone further into the part of yourself that seems to have at some point, impossibly, ended. It hadn’t seemed that unsettling at the time, but maybe this is just some sort of delayed reaction. That strange inconsistency, the certainty that you are infinite, existing outside of time and space, yet that existence had also somehow been made finite, or made to become...not...you burst into a fresh round of sobs. Okay, shit, time to leave it alone.

Papyrus, in an unprecedented move, is somehow unavailable. Your messages to him had actually been marked as undeliverable.

His brother responds to your hesitant text message by shuffling out of your kitchen with his hands in his hoodie pockets, and you yell and jump back, still crying uncontrollably.

He looks at you, sockets widening slowly.

“hm,” he says quietly, and his bony hand emerges to scratch at the back of his cervical spine. “how long’s that been going on for?”

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” you wail.

He turns his head and glances back to the kitchen, then shuffles closer and plops down on the part of the couch perpendicular to you with a chuffing noise.

“can’t exactly just do that sort of thing outside,” he says evenly.

“Where’s Papyrus?” you gesture weakly. “Is he okay?” you add, breath hitching in the middle.

Sans leans back a little further, face unreadable. “he’s fine. s’warmer out now so him n the kid decided to take one a their little camping trips. won’t be back til thursday.”

“They’re _camping_?” you sob incredulously. “ _Where?_ He doesn’t even have any reception, and I thought that didn’t matter with monster phones.”

He goes even flatter, somehow laying down while sitting.

“up on the mountain. s’fine, they do it a few times a year when it’s nice out.” He doesn’t actually seem very happy about it at all, but you’ve got bigger problems at the moment.

“How do I get this to _stop_?” you ask helplessly. “I’m making myself sick this way, it’s been _four hours_ , and I know it’s part of the, what, the whatever’s w-wrong w-with-”

He rolls his skull on his neck and looks you over, seeming half asleep and evaluating at the same time.

“you woke up like that?”

“Yes,” you gesture, and he exhales heavily, sockets closing a little more.

“hungry?” he tries.

You shake your head, touching a tissue to your incredibly sore face.

“in pain? got your meds?”

“I get what you’re doing, but can you at least give me credit for knowing the difference between problems I’ve had for all or most of my life,” you gesture a little angrily, “and an _entirely different_ problem that is obviously _new_?” You’d try some calming breaths, but you can’t. “You think I cry like this over a little _pain_? I’m in pain every goddamn day, and it’s not like you-” you cut off, leaning over and putting your hands over your face. You literally _can’t_ calm down. This sucks.

“sorry,” you hear him say, a lot closer and above you now. You don’t know if he did that thing he does or if he just got up and walked over to you, but you also don’t care anymore.

“wish I had better news for ya,” he says, voice a little gravelly. “might go on like this for a while.”

“How long?” you manage to choke out.

“day or two, maybe” he replies evasively, and you feel him sit down next to you.

“I can’t _live_ like this,” you sob out with renewed misery. The only answer is a soft rasping noise of bone on bone. “I’ve n-never felt like this in m-my fucking life,” you ramble in despair. “N-not even when my m-mom-” you choke off, shoulders shaking silently. You suck in another breath. “What does that even say about m-me as a person? I can’t even-”

Sans just sits there, and it doesn’t make you feel better, but it does….something.

“I wish P-papyrus was here,” you stutter out after a few more minutes.

“same here, buddy,” he replies fervently, but then you feel him shift. Leans forward or something.

“any particular reason for that?” he inquires. “this happen before?”

You take your hands off your face and try to look at him, but it’s too bleary. You pull some tissues out of the box, wipe and blow, then add them to the mountain of discarded paper and snot on your coffee table.

“Not this, but h-he calmed me down before, once. H-h-h-” you sob, shut up, and sign. “Had a bad time after a visit to my sister while I was off work a while back. He just sort of, did healing?” You hold your arms out in a wide oval, and his sockets widen again. “I felt amazing for almost a week after that. Not like I would ask him to do that all the time or anything, but-”

You cut off, vaguely remembering that Papyrus had implied he’d done the same for his brother, and that he didn’t like to talk about it. Or maybe he meant that Sans wouldn’t have wanted him to talk about it? You pull out more tissues, cup them in your hands and just hold them against your eyes for a minute or two. Sans is really quiet, and you wonder again if you’ve said something wrong. Then, he stands up.

“you got a bed?” he asks in a less defeated tone of voice.

You pull down the tissues and blink at him, utterly perplexed. He’s looking down at you, grin a little flattened and his sockets are a different shape than usual. Frowning, maybe? Sad? It’s hard to tell. You don’t think you’ve really seen him from underneath before, and you notice that the condyle of his jaw looks like it might be slightly...fused? To his mandibular fossa on the right side. Wait, why did he ask you if you have a _bed_?

He exhales. “if s’not obvious, I can’t exactly pick you _up_ ,” he says a little wryly.

“Are you saying you can do what your brother did?” you sign in confusion.

“nope,” he replies evenly. “might be able to help anyways, but...can’t promise nothin.”

“I’ll try anything,” you sign fervently, “but...why do you need a bed?” You blush a little, thinking about the night you’d both gotten a little tipsy and talked a lot about certain sorts of activities people might do from time to time. Although upon further reflection, he might have hinted pretty heavily that he and humans weren’t really even compatible that way, so you’re probably just making things awkward for no reason. As a matter of fact, if this requires physical proximity, too… you look at the couch you’re on, trying to imagine Sans picking you up and holding you the way Papyrus had, and it’d be really amusing if it wasn’t for the fog of absolute despair invading you. There’s just not enough room, and the arrangement would be impossible.

You stand up. “Sorry,” you croak unevenly. “I obviously can’t think straight. Like I said, I’ll try anything at this point. It’s up here,” you say, already turning to walk up the stairs. You hear him shuffling along behind you.

When you get upstairs, you turn around and look at him. He points to the bed.

“just lie down facing that way.”

“What are you going to do?” you ask listlessly.

“gonna lay there,” he replies shortly, indicating the space behind where he’d pointed for you. Oddly enough, he zips up his hoodie. Well, whatever. You crawl into bed and lie on your side with the covers pulled up over your heaving shoulders. Then you rummage, get an extra pillow to keep your head raised a little more so it feels less like it’s going to explode from the congestion.

The bed moves and you feel Sans clamber up and scoot forward. A mittened hand is thrown over you on top of the covers, and his weight presses down on the duvet and sheets. The increased pressure is nice, but you still can’t exhale without your breath catching. There’s more tissues on your nightstand, and you pull one out, blow your nose painfully for the billionth time.

“W-what’s supposed to happen?” you mumble thickly.

“’m gonna go to sleep,” he answers.

“What?” you rasp, a little irritated. He’s just going to take a nap here while you sob? You appreciate that he’s here, sure, and you’re not alone, but...if he wanted to take a nap he could’ve just stayed home and left you to it. Your eyes burn even more.

His sigh is heavy enough to stir your hair.

“i guess you figured out i need that too sometimes, right? almost every time, i get tired. end up taking a nap. paps always gets mad ‘cause then _he_ always falls asleep,” rumbles. “like he caught my lazy. s’what he says.”

You’re trying to follow that through the haze of bizarre, soul-crushing grief and the novelty of being able to understand someone speaking behind you.

“You can make people fall asleep?” you croak, sniffling.

“dunno,” he says quietly. “worth a try. ‘sides... you really wanna be awake for this?”

You hiccup a little. “W-why does him falling asleep make you think this’ll make me sleep?”

His breath stirs your hair again. Maybe it’s because instead of coming out of nostrils, it’s just a big hole in his face.

“cause that’s the only time my brother sleeps,” he answers, sounding faintly amused.

You consider the fact that Papyrus had been up, dressed to the nines and ready to go that time you texted at 2 am or so, and then had subsequently held you like a basket of laundry for 8 hours straight while he watched variety shows. Then spent a long morning and afternoon throwing bones around, doing calisthenics, and pretending not to notice a robot flirting with him so subtly it became a sort of art form itself, decided to take a scenic drive to watch the sun set over the ocean (aka gotten hopelessly lost after a wrong turn), bought you dinner, and then dropped you off that night with the same vivacious energy he’d shown up with almost 24 hours before.

“Okay. Let’s try it,” you reply. “Need me to do anything?”

“nope,” he replies shortly, already sounding a little vague. “i can sleep anywhere.”

Funnily enough, as you stare at the wall of your room, the constant hitching of your chest you’ve been dealing with since you woke up (and maybe a little before then, judging from the state of your pillowcase), slowly starts to lessen. It’s almost like… something is insulating the raw, hectic core of what you’re feeling,; wrapping it up, somehow. Making it fuzzy, less distinct. Could he already be asleep? If so, that’s honestly impressive. Huh. Your eyes are drying a bit, and you open your mouth to-

A quiet but unmistakeable droning noise sounds from behind you, and it’s like someone pushes a button that turns off your brain.

***

When you open your gritty, grief-scoured lids, it’s pitch dark in your bedroom except for the faint light from one of the streetlights outside. It makes a stripe on your bookshelf where the curtains are open. Something white catches your eye, and you look down and see a skeletal hand in front of you seeming to float ghostlike on your dark duvet.

Oh, yeah. The faint rasp of breath behind you must be Sans. Considering it had been late morning when he’d come over, you must have been asleep for….shit. All day.

But you’re awake now, and you actually feel...well, you don’t feel good, that’s for sure. But despite the fact that you might explode if you don’t get up to pee soon, it’s surprisingly tolerable. You try to eyeball the situation to see if you can sneak out without waking him, since he seems like he’s still pretty out, and notice his mitten on the floor where it must have fallen off.

You try closing your eyes again since being conscious still seems like a lot to deal with, and you notice a sort of...resonance? It’s not warmth, but it’s a little like it. Less noticeable than when Papyrus had held you, but it’s there. And it doesn’t feel the same, although to be fair at the time you’d been in terrible pain, and then on a terribly lot of medication. As far as you can tell, this resonance seems to just radiate from the skeletons’ bodies somehow, although you have no idea if it requires some sort of focus, preparation, or concentration behind it. You head another faint snore from behind you. Huh. Maybe it’s just a side effect of being physically near them.

You notice Sans’s bony phalanges again. The resonance you feel now is actually similar to how it had felt when you’d touched his bare hand, when you’d taken the “shortcut” back home after the night at Grillby’s, except all over. You wonder if his odd practice of putting on outerwear to take a nap is some kind of habit he picked up, or if he just gets really cold from not having skin? ….or, geez, maybe he’s worried you might touch his bones while he’s asleep? Oh, man. Someone must have really done a number on this guy at some point. Your soul quirks a little with sympathy, but you’re probably just jumping to conclusions again.

And at this point you’re gonna piss the bed if you don’t get up. You just sort of gently push the covers back, incidentally moving his arm without touching it. He ends up rolling over and throwing that arm over his head, still snoring. Seems like he wiggled halfway out of his hoodie at some point, too, even though it’s still mostly zipped and the bare arm’s just kind of coming out of the neck hole.

You don’t bother turning on any of the lights since your head’s starting to pound again, but you use the bathroom and head downstairs to grab some water, at the very least. You lean against the wall as you descend heavily, feeling guilty about how much Sans is putting himself out for you. Surely he has better ways to spend his time than babysitting a grownass adult who just can’t stop crying.

You glance at the clock, and it looks like it’s 11 pm. Wow. You just spent twelve hours asleep, only a few hours after you’d woken up in the morning. Sans’s sleep spell or whatever it is is no fucking joke.

Your body doesn’t even feel that bad, you think as you take you night meds out of your countertop pill dispenser. And it’s not like what you’re having trouble with right now is even a legitimate medical problem. You fill a glass at the kitchen tap. Nope, it’s just you being a big, fat crybaby about nothing in particular. You gasp as your swollen eyes burn again. Oh, shit. See? You can’t even fill a glass of water at the tap without…

A sob hits you, and you almost inhale the water you’re trying to drink. You can’t fucking do anything right, can you? Can’t even drink water without falling apart.

Wait a second.

You watch a fat tear fall into your glass of water, then hiccup again as you gaze at the ceiling. You’d been fine as long as you’d been in bed, then as soon as you got up...whoa. You fill you glass again and stagger upstairs, a few sobs escaping you as you turn the corner back into the bedroom.

Sans’s sockets are open, and his hoodie’s back on.

“heya.” His eye lights, inexplicably visible even though the light’s coming from behind him, take in your fragile state. “sorry, guess it didn’t help that much. least you got a break.”

“It was,” you wail pathetically. “Then I-I got up.”

“huh?”

“I was m-mostly okay as long as I was laying there,” you explain tearfully. “Even a-a-fter I w-woke up.”

He looks surprised, then thoughtful.

“maybe you should come back, then.”

You stay standing there, clutching your water glass indecisively and wiping at your face, making it burn even more.

“Don’t you have...stuff you have to do?”

“nah,” he replies easily, then pulls the blankets back a little more. “with the kid n paps gone i spend the whole time mostly sleepin’ anyways.” He glances to the side a little, then back at you. Smiles a little. “’sides, now you got me curious,” he tries, but the smile fades after a second or two.

“I’m not that t-t-tired,” you say, and you're not even sure why you’re still arguing.

He shrugs, lays back down.

“you don’t gotta sleep. don’t gotta do anything.”

A few long seconds pass before you finally set your glass on the nightstand and shakily crawl back onto the sheet-covered mattress. You pull the covers back up over your shoulder and turn back around, and his arm goes back over you. This time, it seems like he’s leaned up on one of his elbows, though. You glance up, and he’s not staring down at you, but he could if he wanted to.

You immediately have uncharitable thoughts about being some kind of science experiment for him, since apparently he’s some kind of skeletal super genius but only for shits and giggles, but recognize it as a symptom of whatever the fuck is wrong with you right now. You try to take a deep breath, but it still hitches, and you sob it out. Your reach over for another tissue, since your pillow’s getting wet.

“nothing yet, huh?” he asks quietly. “wonder if i gotta go to sleep again.”

“Y-you don’t know?” you ask.

“not like this is a situation i’m in all that often,” he replies after a while.

This time, your deep breath succeeds. “You really think you have some k-kind of magic you d-don’t know about?”

He doesn’t answer, but you notice your eyes are starting to dry out. His silence is irksome, but you add, “It’s starting to work now.”

“huh.” This time he does look down at you, or at least you think so based on the movement in the corner of your eye. “what’s it like?”

You close your eyes and concentrate on the feeling.

“Like...someone pulling a cloth over a lamp. A dampening effect?”

“hm.” He shifts, and it feels like he’s laying down a bit more instead of being up on his elbow. His face is very close, and you can feel him breathing almost on your neck. You notice he’s pushed his hand forward, which is still bare. The bones still seem luminous even in the darkened room.

“can I see your hand a sec?”

You pull it out from under the covers and hold it up, and he gathers it up into his own. They still don’t seem to be any particular temperature, although you suppose since they’re not the same slightly cool temperature as the room, they must generate some kind of heat. Or they’re just...internally neutral, somehow? It still has that same feeling of magic you remember: subtle, but there. Not as much as magic-powered objects you’ve been near or touched, but more than you remember from touching other monsters, although you suppose they all have that sort of...aura? That sounds silly.

But when you think about it though, you get a lot of sensations from touching other humans, too: heat, moisture, texture, and other things you’re sure you don’t even notice consciously. This feeling might just be another version of that, only it seems strange because you’re not used to it. Maybe it has to do with that continuum stuff Sans had talked about before. Maybe that’s what’s generating whatever this is.

“that doing anything?” he asks quietly from behind your head.

“I don’t think so,” you answer. “Not any more than it was before. I think it’s just being near you that’s doing it.”

“huh,” he whispers, then lets your hand go and lays back down completely, but closer than before. You’re quiet for a long time, but you don’t start crying again. You feel...almost tolerable. It’s not good or anything, but it’s far preferable to before. A thought occurs to you.

“Is this why Frisk wants you to sing to them that way?” you ask.

“hard to say. there’s a lot of other factors going on there.”

“You’re a lot like your brother,” you rasp.

A huff of surprise. “you think so?”

“Once you decide you’re not going to answer a question...you don’t. And absolutely nothing can get it out of you.”

He sighs heavily, and you catch his dry, osseous smell.

“it’s not my decision,” he replies defeatedly. You didn’t really mean it that pointedly, but you suppose that’s what would be on his mind, especially in a situation like this. Something that’s been bothering him. And it reminds you of something that’s been bothering you for a while, too.

“But it’s an eight-year-old human _child’s_ decision? Even 19 is too young for that kind of responsibility. Deciding what to tell and not tell, making the call for two entire species?”

He shifts a little, but doesn’t move away. “told ya about that, huh? wonder what else they said.” He’s quiet for a second before continuing.

“you got some idea what they can do. you think they don’t gotta make decisions like that all the time?” It’s almost exactly what Frisk had said themself, but Sans’s voice sounds very flat, almost cold. You wonder if you’ve overstepped into some sort of family issue, but then you realize it doesn’t seem like the coldness in his voice was directed at you. The more you think about it, the more you’re sure. It’s directed at Frisk.

And you really think about what you’ve been saying.

What _he’s_ saying.

Frisk has the ability to make things that have happened... _not_ have happened. How deep would that go? How long have they been able to do this, how long has Sans known about it? What sort of thing could happen that would make Frisk _want_ to...or _have_ to? No.

You think about what you’d seen for yourself, the part of your soul that had somehow been truncated, your endless self that had seen an end. No. The impossibility you had to somehow learn to absorb, and what it feels like. What it _really_ feels like when you think about it _this way_.

No.

You start to shake.

“...I died, didn’t I?” It’s a high-pitched whisper.

His arm tightens around you, increasing the pressure on the blanket and containing your shivers, although they also increase instead of lessening.

“yeah,” he rasps at last, regret and grief roughening his voice.

And even though he’s holding you tighter than ever, your shoulders shake as your swollen, exhausted eyes suddenly pour horrified, scalding tears into your pillow.

“Why did this _h-_ _h_ _-h_ _appen_ to me?” you cry between short, shocked breaths, voice thin and panicked between chattering teeth.

“sorry,” he mumbles; what you think is his forehead is pressed to the back of your neck. “m’sorry.” His voice breaks.

Grief too deep to contain wracks your body; you curl inward involuntarily as it pushes all the air out of your lungs. So many things you _could_ have been are coming unraveled atom by atom, and that unmaking pushes its way into you, insisting that you acknowledge it. It _hurts_. When you finally suck a strangled breath back in, the exhale becomes an unstoppable, violent wail of despair. You’re writhing in agony because it’s the end of everything; the end of you.

The whole world is ending.

And when it does, you hear the sound of quiet, helpless weeping behind you, a tingling on the back of your neck.

He doesn’t let you go.

***

f o r  a  l o n g  t i m e

***

Something a little more like consciousness pours into your body; a vessel filled unwillingly.

“You died too?” Your voice is gone, you’re just shaping your breath at him.

At some point you’d lost some time; now you and Sans are lying like twin commas folded toward each other. You can feel his shinbones on your thighs, and the tops of your heads are touching. His feet are bare where the covers have been kicked down, and there’s something raw and honest about that. The space between you seems to contain your shared grief like a bowl, keeping it from slipping out. Closed off like this it’s almost palpable, but it has a boundary now. Together, you’ve created limits for it.

“yeah.” One of the benefits of not having a throat, you suppose, but his voice is cracked, rough. Both of you have your hands curled in front of you, and you reach out to touch his hard, smooth fingers tentatively.

“Do you remember it?”

“no.”

Quiet for a little while.

“you’d think it’d take a piece of you,” he adds eventually. “but it adds one instead. just flies back from the end, winds up stuck to you. somethin’ you gotta make room for, or everything else gets shoved out.”

“What happened to me at your house that day?

A longer silence. “you sure you wanna talk about that right now?”

“What happened?”

He sighs unsteadily.

“frisk told you...how you died.”

“What happened?” you mouth insistently.

His hand moves, grips your fingers.

“your soul’s blue.”

“So?”

“integrity,” he answers after several minutes, “makes it hard to lie to yourself, and still... _be_ yourself. you couldn’t accept what you were hearing, but...you knew it was true. frisk tellin’ ya made it so it had to be dealt with right then, and you...you _couldn’t_. but you couldn’t ignore it, either.”

His breath is uneven.

“you...tore yourself apart,” he rasps unwillingly. “right there in the dining room.”

Air squeezes slow and high through your ruined vocal cords.

“paps held ya together somehow, and...me n frisk got all the, uh. the rest of it. then vulkin… she fused it.”

Your breath hisses between your teeth for a little while.

“if i hadn’t asked them to, uh...explain. maybe that woulda been different,” he whispers hollowly. “but i was...”

He trails off, shudders.

“Like this,” you mouth.

He doesn’t answer.

“look,” he says heavily. “you eat today?”

You turn your head slowly in the negative, brushing against his skull.

“maybe...” he trails off. Your head’s still shaking, and continues for several more seconds.

“Can we go back to sleep?” You barely move your lips.

He sucks in a long, shuddering breath and lets it out.

“okay.”

***

The sun rises eventually behind a thick cloud cover. Your ravaged eyes open into reluctant gray-blue light.

Your forehead’s pressed against something hard, enough to maybe leave a dent. It’s Sans, you realize. You’ve curled up even more, and now his bony knees are tucked into your midsection, and your face is shoved against his collarbone. Your arms are crossed across your body, one hand tucked into your armpit, and it’s starting to go numb. Weirdly enough, it doesn't feel like a compromising position, maybe because his body is so...neutral, in a way. It’s more or less the same all over: he’s really just bones.

“i’d tell ya not to get any ideas, but i doubt you’re up for that,” a dry, quiet voice intones above you. Seems like it’s attempting levity, but falls short. It takes all your energy just to move you head and tilt it up. Sans is already looking down at you, and when he sees your face he winces visibly, eye lights shrinking to points.

His hand tightens on your shoulder, and only then do you realize it had already been there.

“look,” he starts, then glances away. You wonder how long he’s been awake for. The grooves under his sockets look deep, but it’s not apparent whether it’s from too much or not enough sleep. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

“i can...stay.” he says, sounding oddly conflicted. “but, i gotta go get some stuff.”

Your voice is gone, and your hands are numb. You feel yourself trying to curl back in again, but the hand on your shoulders stops you.

“it’s that, or i’m taking you to toriel,” he says, a slight edge in his voice. You look back up at him, and he seems about as keen on that idea as you are, which is extremely not. “’m not saying there’s a _good_ time for this, but...”

Oh. Yeah, Frisk and Papyrus’s camping trip. Or maybe he means something else entirely. You can’t bring yourself to care, to be honest.

You curl again, and this time he doesn’t stop you. Your head slides off his humerus, where it apparently had been pillowed (in a sense; it’s probably left another dent in your scalp from the tingle as you remove it), and you ball up indifferently.

He sighs heavily, and you feel him get up. You don’t watch him leave, you don’t move at all. But you hear the bedroom door click shut behind him.

Your try not to think about how you feel, but you can’t really think about anything else. What Sans had said about something being added...you feel it. It’s true. How is it possible to add an absence, you wonder? If you concentrate on that too hard, it gives you a flickering, awful sensation.

And Sans had been through the same thing? You wonder why he seems so much better than...well, maybe not. Maybe seeming and being are different. Time barely seems to exist, but apparently he’s been gone long enough for a few slow tears to squeeze out of your tortured eyes. The curtains are still parted, but there’s no bar of light, only the sameness of overcast with its directionless illumination.

The door opens behind you and Sans shuffles back in, huffing a little. Something heavy hits the bed, then something else. He comes back into your line of sight, fiddles around for a second, then crawls back over to you a little awkwardly. He’s holding a clear plastic bottle, but there’s no cap and the label’s been torn half off. Looks like it’s full, though.

“’k, you gotta drink this.”

You stare at him dully.

His face goes a little out of tune. “c’mon, i already drank mine.” He looks a little desperate now, and like he’s thinking really hard, too. “uh...” He shifts around, spilling a little until he’s cross-legged beside you. “so. this is water, but it’s... from waterfall.”

You manage to bring up a sigh from somewhere.

“okay, you don’t know what that is. so, you know we were all sealed underground, right? and you..well, you figured out everything else that was sealed down there with us too. or maybe you were just guessing. doesn’t matter. well, you know how water...cycles, right? rain, evaporation... now imagine generations of monsters living and dying, but in a closed system. all that water, in a closed system.”

Despite yourself, you’re interested in what he’s saying. You stir a little, annoyed.

“so. guess you could say this isn’t really water anymore, but uh, it’s...it’s not like what you had before at grillby’s but it’ll fix your throat. maybe. just...i had to go all the way underground to get it, and i don’t exactly, uh, enjoy that necessarily, so the least you can do is...”

He’s rambling, which seems a little weird for him. But it’s the last part...’the least you can do’, huh? Reminds you of something.

You struggle up to one elbow, try to take the bottle but your hand’s shaking and numb, and it sloshes. His hand steadies the bottle, and you drink.

And drink. He lets go as you tip the bottle up.

“Thank you,” you say finally, and your voice isn’t even as rough as you were expecting. You couldn’t even say what that had tasted like, but it’s definitely gone now. He just exhales slowly, then leans over abruptly to drag something across the bed, and incidentally, right over your body. It’s a little annoying, again. In your peripheral vision, you think you see one of his sockets close, and you hear a soft clack and rasp as his phalanges run over it repeatedly. He mumbles something even you can’t entirely make sense of, so maybe he’s not talking to you. Huh. Apparently that makes a difference. He’s mumbling some more as he rummages around in what’s apparently a stained, worn backpack, and it irritates you enough to finally struggle up and lean back against the wall behind your bed.

He looks up, and holds out something wrapped in a piece of paper. When you don’t take it right away, he just drops it in your lap and scoots up next to you to lean against the wall until your shoulders touch. He’s dragged the backpack with him and pulls out his own newspaper-wrapped object.

“heh. I remember when we would’ve dried this out, saved it to read. maybe put it in the library.” That doesn’t make sense to you, but you watch him unwrap the paper and inside, weirdly enough, is a very large and very fried lump of….something. He tears a piece off and shoves it between his teeth, then rummages again and drops three orange bottles in your lap. Oh. Your meds; the non-PRN ones. You’d completely forgotten about them, and it’s probably a good thing he didn’t.

You swallow them dry one at a time, then open your paper to find a similar fried object.

“What...is this?”

He glances over at your lap as if he needs to check. “dog salad,” he replies shortly. “just eat it.”  
That’s one the worst combination of words you’ve heard, but you lift the lump to your mouth anyway, and take a bite. It’s indescribable in the same way the blender spaghetti had been, but it also disappears down your gullet just as quickly.

Exhausted, you lie back down.

***

You open your eyes again to pitch black, the stripe of light, and a bony arm thrown over you from behind.

“Did you ever figure out what this magic does?” you speak into the dark.

“think maybe we got a misunderstanding going on,” he replies quietly.

“how so?”

“s’like, humans hold on to each other when it gets bad, right?”

“Well...yeah?” you reply, confused.

He sighs. “more like...this is one a those times ‘m not doing magic. i’m just... _being_ magic.”

You’re quiet, trying to think about that. You’re not sure you get it.

“what do humans get outta this?” he asks after a while.

You think about that. Warmth, comfort, the feeling like you’re sharing in….oh. It’s like when you touched his hand, and thought about all the things you might feel from a human touch, just...different. You’re not used to this, so it’s noticeable. But it really does seem like this is doing something more than just comforting you. It feels healing. Not the same as when Papyrus had healed you, since that had been physical.

“I guess we really...” you think about it. Neuroscience, studies in neuropsychology, social psychology, and the effects of isolation versus community. All those factors that no one can say for sure exactly why it works, but evidence shows that it very much does. The line between believing something will cause benefit and it actually working is...so fine and blurry that it basically doesn’t exist in many cases.

“Monster bodies are different, though.” you say conclusively, although you’re not sure exactly what you’ve concluded.

“yup.”

“What about putting me to sleep?” you persist.

“don’t know if that works if you don’t want it to.”

You’re so glad you’re not alone. You’re quiet for a long time, but you don’t fall back asleep. The pain of your severed existence is still lodged uncomfortably somewhere in your sense of self, and although its jaggedness is softening and blending, it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

“How do you live with this?” you ask quietly.

“no trick to it,” he whispers. “ya just do.”

“But...” you trail off. “How do you live with this?”

A heavy sigh blows down the back of your neck, smelling like bone shavings, exhaustion, and the ghost of grease.

“s’funny. been thinking about some of the stuff you said. how you… wanna keep learning how to just be you. find a way to live your life instead of fighting for it all the time. i dunno. reasons.”

You wait for more, but there isn’t any. After a while, you realize the implication is that something you’d said at some point must have had a profound effect on him. Something twists inside you unexpectedly, but there’s no pain. You have a hard time remembering the last time you thought about something that didn’t actually hurt.

“But-” you don’t know what you’re protesting. It really seems like he knows what he’s doing, at least from where you’re sitting. Like he’s got a handle on things, but only by knowing there _is_ no way to have a handle on any of this. It’s like...wisdom.

“How many times has this _happened_ to you?” you huff in a strained whisper.

“don’t ask me stuff like that,” he growls hollowly. You involuntarily shudder.

After a second, he squeezes you again and you feel his forehead touch the back of your neck apologetically, although neither of you actually apologize. Even though he’s closer than ever, your eyes burn, and tears soak your abused pillowcase again. His breath stirs your hair, and you really hope he doesn’t have a way to know the tears aren’t for you this time.

***

The next time you wake up, your blurry but significantly less sore eyes land on Sans’s back, sitting on the edge of the bed. As you suck in a waking breath, he turns around and looks over his shoulder with a hesitant smile.

“Hey,” you say, then clear your throat and try to return it. Well, you try. He’s got the backpack on his lap, but it seems like everything’s in it, and his hoodie’s on. Seems he cleared off the bed, too.

“Are Frisk and Papyrus back?” You blink rapidly. “It’s...is it Thursday? Already?”

He exhales in wry amusement.

“it’s saturday.”

You open your mouth, but nothing comes out so you just close it again. You’re not even that surprised, to be honest. Maybe you’re just starting to acclimate to time being occasionally less than linear. Guess you really _can_ get used to anything.

“you been out of the woods since wednesday night, though. so i just texted paps again to stay home once he got there,” he reassures you. “it’s gonna get better from here, ‘k?”

He looks like absolute shit, and pretty filthy, but at the same time also...better? He turns a little, gives you an assessing look. His hoodie’s creased and stained, but the grooves under his sockets are far from the worst you’ve seen them. You sit up, and it’s easier than you expected. It also makes your skin crawl, realizing you’re at least as filthy as he is, probably more.

“yeah, I need a shower too,” he remarks with a smile that’s almost a grin this time. “bout to go do that, in fact.”

You nod cautiously, then wince.

“If I’ve been okay since...whenever. You...why did you stay?”

He gives you a really weird look.

“cause I wanted to?”

You can’t really figure out a way to argue with that.

He sighs, pulls the strap of the backpack over one shoulder, and stands.

“see ya,” he says and actually winks.

The door shuts behind him, and he’s gone when you stand, walk over, and open it.

It’s easier than you thought it would be.

 


	10. what, me worry?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Morrissey - Every Day Is Like Sunday](https://youtu.be/d0LeL9BUPtA)

~

Something that’s easy to miss about both chapter 7 and Undertale is that Sans is an _extremely_ skilled interrogator. He might not be what most people think of when they hear that word, but honestly? Torturing someone is a lot of work, and more of a hassle than it’s worth for the quality of info you get. He’d tell you the same.

However, disarming someone with bad jokes (making them feel both comfortable and superior), offering up personal information and vulnerability (ESPECIALLY if it’s true), then knocking them just a little off balance with something unsettling, you get everything you need without even trying. He’s your buddy, right? Definitely helps if you can read faces like book, too. Everyone loves that guy, predictable as the weather. Even when there isn’t any.

You know what Sans isn’t used to? People surprising him. Fun fact: no one has ever actually _asked_ for his friendship before. Maybe they thought they didn’t have to. Wonder why. Something he finds refreshing? Someone having a little integrity for a change. After all, he doesn’t just love his brother; he likes him, too. Thinks he’s a cool dude.

And besides. Nothing in this world or the next has been created that has _ever_ managed to bullshit a skeleton.

Heh.

~

You decide to try journaling to keep track of the days of the week, but in the end it isn’t your thing and you just start making weird lists. They start reproducing, and taking up your deskspace.

Monday: go to work. Talk with Diane about Papyrus party and having new friends. Ask for ride downtown during lunch buy monster food for after appointment. Go home, have appointment with Vulkin. Touch soul, realize maybe you’re finally getting somewhere with all that. Think about magic, how you were able to tear yourself apart.

Tuesday: call sister in morning because half day. Admit you’ve been sicker than you let on. She knows. Talk about hot dog nights with sans. She says you’re really bro-ing it up. You laugh about it. Go to work, talk with a human student who needs a lot of supports maybe? Compare to a monster who gets a notetaker.

Wednesday: Frisk comes in to your office alone and asks if you’ve thought about what they said, asks how you’re doing. You ask if monster market can deliver. They say yes, also they will ask for you. They won’t take your money.

Thursday: happens

Friday: this is just a string of symbols. some of them look like hands. for some reason, you feel like you've been here before.

Saturday: dog nite. Sans really busted your mustard. Literally. Time for new shirts again.

Sunday: you remind yourself to never read the comments.

Sunday: Submit another article, but they don’t accept monster citations. You remind yourself to never read the comments.

Sunday:

Sunday: It's a picture of a T-shirt. It reads: ~~NO HOPE~~ 1 HoPe. you decide not to read the comments.

Sunday:

Monday: This isn’t really helping, so you decide to stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y O U ' R E W E L C O M E
> 
> papyrus-dot-png


	11. and boy are my arms tired

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Primitive Radio Gods - Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand](https://youtu.be/4XJxFAoiWSY)

Two days before Papyrus’s Art Party, it’s hot dog nite.

You’re having a little bit of a rough day, but you and Sans discovered a while back that if he sits on the couch while you sit on a pillow on the floor between his knees, whatever benefit you get from being near him still works. Bonus: you can both drink, eat, and watch TV, since he can see over your head.

Tonight’s feature: manatees, for some fucking reason. He really does seem to like nature documentaries, although you mix it up sometimes by putting on the same shows you’ve seen all the way through between 4 and over a dozen times. He seems pretty amiable about it either way, and if he gets bored, he just goes to sleep. And it does turn out that if you really don’t want to join him in slumber, you usually don’t.

You’re still picking at the hot dogs he brought over, although he’s mostly sticking to drinking the bottles of ketchup he keeps pulling out of his pockets. You saw the same...well, you don’t know if you can call it a ‘brand’, but the bottle’s the same as the ones you saw in the monster market the time you went with Diane. Seems like it’s easier for him to tip ketchup down his throat than it is to shove dogs between his teeth, but it really just depends on his mood, you’ve noticed. And right now his mood seems tired, but he doesn't fall asleep.

“you don’t gotta be worried about paps’s shindig,” he says, apropos of nothing in particular. “you don’t even really have to talk to anyone if you don’t want to. we usually manage to entertain ourselves.”

“What, me worry?” you say absently, watching a baby manatee getting rather disgustingly born underwater. For some reason, you shudder. You guess the miasmal cloud of waterborne blood and …stuff... had finally been enough to get to you. You set the dog aside and take a long swig out of your weird medieval soda, burdock and dandelion. Your sister says it tastes like bubblegum, but you don’t get it. You just like that it’s not too sweet.

“No… I think I might actually be looking forward to it. I mean, I still haven’t met Toriel and to be honest with you, I’m pretty sure I never technically got to _meet_ Undyne,” you point out.

“heh.”

“I don’t know. I guess I am a little nervous. Maybe it’s just that everyone’s helped me so much. It’s hard to be comfortable around people you feel like you should be constantly...thanking? I don’t know.”

“you don’t feel like that around me,” he says after a minute.

“That, my friend, is the most outrageously out-of-character presumption I have ever heard from you.”

He makes a huffing noise, but it doesn’t really sound like a laugh.

“you might be right,” he says after a long time, during which the manatee’s baby manages to grow four whole months in just seconds. Now they’re eating something. “been busier than i’d like lately. gettin’ to me, maybe.”

“Don’t worry about it,” you reply despite the lack of an actual apology, then take another swig of your soda.

“you...really think i don’t get anything out of this?” he says sometime after the baby manatee has long been an adult, sounding legitimately baffled.

You sigh deeply, shut your eyes and lean back a little more. Then you just keeping going until the back of your head lands on the couch cushion.

“No,” you admit quietly. “I don’t think that. I’m not going to sit here and convince myself that I’m the undeserving beneficiary of your pity friendship, although I’m sure I could if I tried. I don’t know how it’s fair that I’m more insecure than I used to be before all this weird shit happened, but I still have to sit in the fact that I’ve regressed, I guess. Or… that I still have to try to get better. Even though I am. Getting better.”

You open your eyes, blink, then strain your neck a little to look up at him almost upside-down from between his knees, though it’s probably a bad idea for your joints.

“Do _you_ get good vibes from cuddling _me_?”

“yeah,” he answers shortly, then grins. He bounces the insides of his knobby-ended femurs against your shoulders briefly.

“you’re all weird and hot.”

You laugh a little, sit back up and end up stuffing another torn up piece of hot dog in your mouth.

“Gee, thanks,” you mumble, chewing. Not like he can see you anyway.

“not a bad thing. ’sides...” his voice gets suggestive. “you mighta heard that _some_...like it _hot_.”

You’re not sure if it’s a reference to the ancient film or his drunken confession about boning Grillby, but either way you manage not to choke while laughing out bits of hot dog as tears of levity run down your face. Man, you’re really a pair. Two crybabies, for real. Also laughbabies.

“so you want me to just come get you when it’s time?” he asks absently after a while.

“I asked Diane for a ride. She didn’t wanna go with after all but she said she’d take me anyways.”

“oh,” he comments unnecessarily.

“I have weird issues left over from people trying to hold it over me that I can’t drive,” you inform him as quickly as you can without being too clipped. “I don’t ever get all my rides from one place if I can help it, it’s just a thing with me.” Okay, not so successful with the not-too-clipped tone.

“none taken,” he says dryly after a beat, and just like that you’re giggling again.

“YOU’RE WELCOME” you holler in your best Papyrus voice, and his surprised, slightly higher-pitched chuckle leaves you feeling unexpectedly warm. That one’s your favorite.

***

“You sure you don’t want to come?” you ask Diane as she pulls up to the curb of the big house, although you’re relieved to see it’s not _actually_ a mansion or anything.

“No, you go ahead. I wouldn’t want to distract you from your big moment. Or, reveal? Whatever this is,” she laughs as the engine idles comfortably. “Besides, I think I’m underdressed.” She grins down at your relative finery and waggles her eyebrows. She’s wearing sweatpants, an inexplicably bedazzled sweatshirt, and grass-stained sneakers, so she’s fairly easy to out-finery. The bar’s low.

You’re wearing your fancy monster clothes, although you have a feeling if it hadn’t been for your failure to model them properly for Frisk during the shopping, you might have just decided to chickenshit one of your usual outfits instead. So maybe it’s just as well.

“I think the clothes are just supposed to be for fun,” you say, smiling a little shyly. “At least, that’s the impression I was given.”

She sighs lightly. “Well, with Toriel, you never know, I guess.”

You look at her, narrow your eyes in consideration. “Do you not like Toriel?”

“What?” She looks like she actually jumped when you said it. That’s funny, but you’re not going to laugh at her discomfiture. That’s rude.

Diane sighs, giggles a little. It’s not rude if she does it. “No, it’s just. I don’t know. She’s so tall and formal and...white. Makes me feel kinda trashy in comparison.”

“You’re not trashy,” you blink at your friend and sort-of-boss in confusion.

“I know,” she drawls, rolling her eyes. “That’s why it’s so annoying.”

Now you laugh, and so does she.

“Okay, go on and get in there before they think we’re stalkers.”

You get out and think about that as you walk up the long, tree-cloaked path to the house, hearing the buzz of Diane's engine fade away. You probably wouldn't have known this place was back here if Diane hadn’t already been there before. It’s set far from the road and doesn’t necessarily _look_ very big from here, even though Frisk had said it is.

You like that your monster outfit makes you feel tall, and the trouser things swish around in a satisfyingly grand manner. The best part of the outfit, however, turned out to be the multiple deep pockets that allow you to stash all your required items and medications in them, rather than having to bring a bag. And they don’t even disturb the line of the clothing. In retrospect, the boutique’s price (which you found out later is called “Them-porium”) had been a downright bargain. There are low lights on the path to either side embedded in the lawn, and you’re pretty sure they’re magic based since you don’t see any fixtures. The directionless glow with no obvious source near the door pretty much confirms that.

The door’s a muted purple color, and when you knock on it, it feels pretty thick. You rub your knuckles a little and look around for a bell instead, since you’re not sure any noise could have penetrated that thing. But to your surprise it opens only a few seconds later, and you plaster a “meeting new people” expression on your face, expecting Toriel.

Instead, it’s Frisk in a t-shirt printed to look like a tuxedo and an electric blue, sequined skirt. Also a pair of blue cat ears on a headband.

“Come on in,” they sign casually, grinning. “You look great! I knew that one would work out. We’re still waiting for Papyrus to get ready so Alphys put on mewmew.”

You don’t know what a mewmew is, but as you walk into the noticeably high-ceilinged house, the lighting’s a lot dimmer and the setting a lot more casual than you’d anticipated. In fact, the first thing you see when you finish walking through the foyer and the long, narrow hall is a big sitting room, dominated by a massive wall screen. It’s showing what appears to be an old-fashioned magical girl anime. Ahh. Mew Mew. The cat ears. Gotcha.

There’s one really long couch and one shorter on perpendicular to it, and a big square coffee table is covered in what look to be specialty snacks and a few mini cupcakes. The longer couch is occupied by Undyne laying almost full length in some kind of long red strappy dress, and her almost alarmingly long, scaled leg is sticking out of a slit in the side, tented up and bouncing a little with nervous energy. She’s got some kind of decorative looking knife strapped to her upper leg as well, and you’re starting to wonder if it’s some kind of cosplay. Alphys, dressed in a dark suit and laying face down directly on top of her wife, seems undisturbed by the movement as she nibbles one of her claws. They both seem equally transfixed by whatever’s happening on the screen. You glance at it; apparently one of the magical girls is transforming.

“Yeah!! Kick her ASS!” Undyne yells, pumping her fist a little violently. Alphys giggles and blushes, then they both notice you’re there and they both wave excitedly and grin at you, although they don’t actually greet you. In fact, Undyne seems to be digging in the front of her dress for some reason, and whatever she finds there is immediately handed to Frisk, who arrives at her side just in time to grab it. They keep going and deposit what appears to be a coin in a very large yet half-full glass jar on the mantelpiece, then make a practiced loop and come back to the short couch, where they flop down next to the yellow monster you remember as their friend from before. The voluminous tulle-and-sequin skirt puffs up a little before they push it down absently.

Frisk nods their head at the end of the long couch by Undyne’s spotless red high heels, where there’s just enough room for your butt. So you walk over, plant it there gamely, and watch some anime or whatever you guess.

Frisk waves in the corner of your eye, and you look over to see them grinning a little sheepishly. “Sorry, this is MK,” they say, indicating their friend. “I guess you never technically met.”

You introduce yourself to Frisk’s friend, who seems just as good-natured as you remember. Frisk also indicates you’re welcome to any of the snacks on the table, but you ate before you came so you only take one of the cupcakes. It’s a little...chewy...but still pretty tasty. After about fifteen more minutes, during which everyone just does more of the same, Alphys sits up, pulls a blocky monster phone out of her tux jacket (turns out it's a very expensive looking tuxedo she has on) and says, “Oh! “M-m-mettaton says he’s r-ready!”

That’s just as well, since you'd noticed a few minutes back that Undyne’s heels were starting to penetrate the couch’s upholstery. You get up with everyone else, and once you’re all standing a massive white shape comes around the corner from another room and stops when it sees you. Okay, so this six or seven foot tall goat angel is definitely Toriel. You’ve seen the photos, but meeting her at home is...interesting.

“Oh! You must be the administrator from the college! Frisk has told me so much about you. I am Toriel, Frisk’s mother!”

She’s wearing a simple light blue dress, almost robelike, but she’s also got a blue gingham apron over top of it, and the incredibly intense maternal vibe billowing off of her doesn’t really come across in the photos. She’s a lot less scary than you imagined, and after everyone just sort of sorts themselves into a group and starts moving off towards wherever this thing is happening, you almost kind of forget she’s actually a literal queen. Of the monsters. Well, maybe you don’t totally forget but it’s not as intimidating as you were expecting, which is good since she also decides to walk right next to you.

“I have heard much of your work in ensuring that all students are able to interact with the materials at Ebott University,” she intones from above your head. It’s a little rough on the neck but it turns out you can read her lips well enough, and her small talk is pretty easy to parse. The muttered conversations around you don’t necessarily help, but it’s not super stressful.

“I was very sorry to hear about the unfortunate incident when my child visited. I wish I had been there,” she intones, and an odd combination of hard anger and soft regret crosses her face briefly. “I was also sorry to hear of your injury, but the brothers have assured me they are overseeing your recovery adequately...” she trails off, and you feel an odd pang as you realize you have absolutely no clue how much any of these people know about your...condition. Well, the new one at least. Ugh. Awkward.

“However,” she adds as you all approach a door that’s more like one you’d expected before arriving, as in it’s huge and double, “if you feel as though you in any way may require additional healing, please let me know.”

Hmm. Well, maybe she doesn’t really know the nature of your problems, so much as they exist. Or who knows. Maybe she’s just being polite.

“No, I think I’m getting better,” you say, smiling up at her hesitantly. “And I’m really, uh, grateful to Papyrus. For...everything.”

“Of course,” she replies graciously, if a little absently. “We’re all very grateful to him, for so very many things.”

Frisk’s the one who ends up pushing the doors open, and everyone shuffles into a surprisingly large and well-lit room, which has a few chairs, some tall potted plants and trees, and some sideboard or tables scattered around near the walls. You look at the floor, and the extremely high ceiling, and figure technically it’s a ballroom. At the far end, a massive blue velvet curtain hands over the wall, or from what you can see, is more or less right in front of the wall. The painting must be behind it.

“GLAD YOU COULD MAKE IT!” you hear shouted behind you, and you jump and turn around.

“Oh!” you say, surprise turning to a pleased grin. “I’m really happy to-” Papyrus is wearing a tuxedo just like Alphys’s, and he looks mighty goddamn dapper, if you do say so yourself. The top hat’s really working with it, too. Nice.

“You look amazing!” you say instead, interrupting yourself.

“NYEH HEH,” he says, fiddling with his bow tie, which appears to be printed with tiny bones. “YES, I AM QUITE WELL-APPOINTED. YOU'RE WELCOME. YOU ARE LOOKING DRESSED APPROPRIATELY FOR SUCH A MOMENTOUS OCCASION YOURSELF, FRIEND!” He offers his arm to you, you are extremely charmed, and you take it and stride together over to where everyone’s just sort of standing aimlessly.

“I’m really excited about this,” you confess, grinning up at him as the faint babble of maybe three quiet conversations in a big, echoey room blends into a drone. He brings you to stand with him at a spot about fifteen feet away from the blue velvet, which is a little confusing since you assumed he’d want to be near the curtain to pull it open or something. But whatever. You’re closer to everyone else that way, anyhow. “I heard, um. Mettaton’s here?”

“YES.” Papyrus’s sockets narrow as he grins with elation. “INTERNATIONALLY FAMOUS STAR OF STAGE, FILM, MUSIC, RODEO, FOXY BOXING, AND SCREEN, THE GREAT METTATON HIMSELF, HAS AGREED TO PRESENT MY LATEST PIECE! I ANTICIPATE APPROPRIATE LEVELS OF FANFARE, TASTEFUL RESTRAINT ON THE POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE, AND AT LEAST FIVE DIFFERENT COLORS OF GLITTER. THERE WILL ALSO BE LASERS.”

“Wow,” you reply, nodding in appreciation. He seems gratified by this, but his sockets still seem to droop a bit at the outside corners. You wonder what’s bumming him out, and take a look around. Oh.

“Is, um, Sans not…?”

“I’M SURE HE’LL BE HERE. WANDERING IN LATE, AS USUAL. IT’S ONLY TO BE EXPECTED OF MY BROTHER, AFTER ALL!” He grins confidently, but you’re beginning to suspect he might be a little worried. Huh. It actually doesn’t seem like Sans to do things that make his brother worry. Annoy him, sure. Make him scream in blatantly fake and occasionally slightly less fake outrage, okay. But from everything you’ve seen, they spend more time complimenting each other (a little backhanded on Paps’s part but still) and just generally being fondly comfortable siblings than anything else.

You give Papyrus’s arm a little squeeze, and he turns to look down at you and give you a sparkling, skeletal grin before facing back over the “crowd” with slightly perkier eye sockets. “WELL, IF NOTHING ELSE, I HOPE HE GETS HERE BEFORE THE DANCING STARTS,” he sighs.

“Oh,” you say, a little baffled. “I didn’t, um. I don’t think I’m up for dancing,” you admit.

He looks down at you again looking even more confused than you were, then his expression clears and he pats your arm reassuringly.

“OH! I SEE! YOU HAVEN’T BEEN TO ARTBALL BEFORE. DO NOT FEAR, I-” he places his white-gloved hand on his chest and shuts his sockets momentarily, “-THE GREAT PAPYRUS, WILL INSTRUCT YOU IN ACCURATE BALLROOM ETIQUETTE.”

He makes a sweeping gesture. “THIS IS THE BALLROOM. I HAVE HAD THE FLOOR CLEARED IN PREPARATION FOR THE UPCOMING FESTIVITIES. ALL PARTICIPANTS WILL RESPECT YOUR PERSONAL BOUNDARIES AND SPACE, ALTHOUGH YOU MAY FEEL FREE TO APPROACH ANYONE FOR CONVERSATION, HAIKU, OR WRESTLING AT ANY POINT. YOU MAY ALSO REFUSE ONE, OR BOTH, OR EITHER IF YOU CHOOSE.”

He points to the curtain.

“THAT’S MY PAINTING! IT WILL BE REVEALED ONCE THE EXTREMELY POPULAR AND INCREDIBLY TASTEFUL METTATON’S SPEECH IS COMPLETED. AT THAT TIME, ALL PARTICIPANTS WILL ADMIRE, WRESTLE, OR CONVERSE AS THEY CHOOSE.” He points out a large, circular area that seems to have a different type of flooring than the rest of the room. “METTATON AND I WILL DANCE WHILE THIS OCCURS. NO HAIKU IS PERMITTED AT THAT OR ANY OTHER TIME.”

“Oh,” you say nodding thoughtfully. And you do think about it. “ _Cool_ ,” you add, nodding some more.

“YES,” he sighs happily. “TONIGHT’S SELECTION IS A SKELETON-AND-ROBOT REENACTMENT OF METTATON’S SIX-PART ONE-ROBOT REENACTMENT OF THE FIRST TEN MINUTES OF THE NUTCRACKER. I’M SURE THE CONNECTING THEME WILL BECOME CLEAR ONCE YOU’VE SEEN YOUR PAINTING,” he grins, seeming much heartened by explaining all of this to you. You feel glad to help.

“That’s gonna be awesome,” you say admiringly. “Does he-”

The lights near the curtain cut, and suddenly a billow of what you assume is fog-machine-generated fog fills the area in front of the curtain. Tiny lights like fireflies flow through it, then what you assume are the aforementioned lasers. Considering they don’t make you wince, it’s likely they’re actually magic and not...whatever not-magic lasers are.

A spotlight hits the fog, and a rousing swell of brass horns fills the room, rising into a crescendo before fading slowly. Papyrus nods tightly in approval.

The fog clears surprisingly suddenly, and the spotlight reveals Mettaton posing dramatically in a stiff-collared black satin cape.

In his single-wheeled box form.

You sigh, and then try not to make it obvious you sighed.

“I UNDERSTAND, IT IS VERY MOVING,” Papyrus comments, patting your arm reassuringly. “IF YOU MUST WEEP, PLEASE KNOW THAT ARTBALL IS NOTHING IF NOT AN EMOTIONALLY SUPPORTIVE ENVIRONMENT. YOU MAY EXPRESS YOURSELF AT ANY TIME IN ANY WAY OTHER THAN FIVE SYLLABLES, SEVEN SYLLABLES, AND A SUBSEQUENT FIVE SYLLABLES.

Well, you suppose whatever Mettaton has to say will remain a mystery, as his bright, chiptunes voice floods through the ballroom. You can’t understand a word. However, several minutes into the speech, Papyrus’s elbow, which you’re still holding, lowers a good two inches for no reason you can discern. You look up at him, but his expression remains one of rapt fascination and a little bit of...adulation, maybe? You wonder why he seems so impressed, considering this is someone he already knows. But some kind of tension had left his shoulders at that particular moment, and you’re really curious why. Then you glance around at the rest of the people standing there, and notice that Sans has appeared between Frisk and Alphys. Oh.

He looks like _shit_ , though. Not gross or dirty, nothing like that just… incredibly exhausted, slumped in his usual sort of outfit rather than anything special. His grin looks like it’s trying to slide off although that’s obviously impossible. His sockets are already half-closed, even though you think he might be trying to look like he’s paying attention. You think about what he’d been saying about being busy the last time you’d seen him, and wonder what on earth he’s had going on to make him look like that. You can’t stop yourself from sighing again, either. Papyrus’s hand pats yours reassuringly, although neither his attention nor his expression shifts a whit.

As the pomp and circumstance continues, you think about what it means to you to be here, and feel a soft glow when you realize that you’re partially the reason for this event. You suppose Papyrus would have eventually made a painting and done all of...this...no matter what, but it makes you feel oddly special to be the reason for his inspiration, whatever had prompted it. And you sort of want to express that to him. Well, he said you could express yourself at any time, and none of the rules had precluded doing so during a speech you can neither understand nor respond to.

“Hey,” you say quietly. “I just wanted to thank you for everything. For all of this. For helping me so much, and making the painting and giving it to me, and...I don’t know. I don’t know what I did to deserve your friendship, or any of this. I don’t know what I deserve-”

You cut off, since everyone is suddenly clapping, and it sounds like another round of fanfare is closing out whatever the boxy robot’s speech had been. A golden rope is slowly lowering from the ceiling, and you assume it must have something to do with the curtain. You look up at the tall skeleton beside you and open your mouth, but he grasps both of your hands in his and turns you a little, grinning kindly.

Papyrus somehow manages to move between you and the blue curtain just as it falls to the ground, and the lights dim further, emphasizing the spotlight behind him until he’s mostly a massive shape blocking the light. You fall into his shadow as the light turns behind him, a conditional twilight in which you somehow manage to see an unprecedented soft, blue light in his sockets for a brief moment, just before he becomes so backlit the silhouetting effect is compete.

“YOU DESERVE _HAPPINESS_ , DEAR HUMAN. WE ALL DO.”

The spotlight crests and illuminates the top hat, which he inexplicably removes, and even more inexplicably tosses high into the air to land somewhere unseen behind him. His first two fingers dart into his tux jacket and carefully remove a fresh-cut and surprisingly non-disheveled red rose, which he carefully places between his teeth as he meets your gaze. He lifts his chin, then tilts his head back farther and _just keeps on going_ until you realize he’s doing a full slow motion backbend as the lights melts slowly over his entire body. He’s bathed in it as tiny, bright motes dance in the light, more like sparkles than dust.

The moment when you’re certain he’s about to either fall to the ground or touch it with the top of his skull, he’s suddenly ascending instead and you realize Mettaton’s box form has come up behind him, caught him at the hips and is now lifting him slowly in cartoonishly large, white-gloved hands. The back of Papyrus’s hand is pressed to his forehead, and his other arm is extended out above his head. As the spotlight follows them to the larger space he’d indicated before, you notice he has white spats on his pointed, shiny black shoes that catch the light perfectly. In fact, that leg is extended impossibly far, and both of them are somehow managing to balance on Mettaton’s single, tiny wheel.

He already seemed top heavy _before_ he was carrying the world’s tallest living skeleton. You’re drawn along in their wake, the tension of how they’re able not to just fall over despite the fact that Mettaton’s tubelike arms are extending further and further above his rectangular body as they move along riveting you helplessly. You literally can’t look away. By the time they arrive at the dance floor proper, Papyrus’s carefully posed body must be almost twelve feet in the air, and suddenly a rolling drumbeat and jangling guitars fill the ballroom.

_When! I saw you in the restaurant_  
_You! could tell I was no debutante_

Okay, well, that’s not The Nutcracker. At least not any way you’ve ever heard it. In fact, you’re pretty certain that’s actually a Blondie song.

That’s when you notice they’ve started rotating slowly. As they gain momentum, the tuxedo-clad skeleton’s limbs begin to shift poses, gloves and spats catching the light as he bends even further back, his broad chest and almost impossibly narrow hips emphasizing his swanlike gestures.

_...pleasure's real or is it fantasy?_  
_Reel to reel is living verite_  
_People stop and stare at me; we just walk on by_  
_We just keep on dreaming…_

You feel your arms creep around to hug yourself, utterly transfixed by the unprecedented spectacle in front of you. Now Mettaton is not only rotating, but managing to somehow also move in a synchronized circle around the dance floor without disturbing Papyrus’s balance as he bends his back and waves his arms fluidly. The sparkles in the spotlight change color from green to pink without ever landing on anything or running out, and you realize it must be some sort of special effect.

As the song’s driving beat and circular choruses reach their peak, you realize Papyrus is changing positions again, but this time ends up _standing_ on the robot’s broad hands. His arms reach over his head, one drawing along the other sensuously in a motion almost as if he’s pulling on elbow-length gloves. They’re pirouetting in place faster and faster, and the suspense grows unbearable.

The piercing synthesizers peak, and Papyrus does a perfect backflip off Mettaton’s hands, lands gallantly kneeling with the rose still in his teeth, and extends his hand yearningly towards the caped rectangle in front of him as the last strains fade. The spotlight cuts out.

The sudden, sharp electronic drumbeat makes you jump, since it also coincides with the return of the spotlight and a massive explosion of hot pink glitter.

_Ooooh, baby, do you know what that's worth!?  
Ooooh, heaven is a place on earth!_

Mettaton rises from the cloud of glitter in his elegant, silvery android form, perfect features framed by the twin points of the stiff-collared black cape. At the second sharp drumbeat, he whips it off in a single fluid motion to reveal an exact duplicate of Frisk’s outfit, then crowns himself slowly with a blue cat-ear headband. His eyes close as his head tilts down and to the side, expression affectedly demure, arm still extended.

_They say in heaven love comes first!_  
_We'll make heaven a place on earth!_  
_Ooh, heaven is a place on earth…._

As the music kicks in riotously, the two circle each other carefully with precisely placed steps, gleaming black and white shoes flashing and pink high heels darting. The guitars fall off and the chorus begins, and suddenly they’ve grasped each other so closely that you can see that Mettaton’s nose is almost inside Papyrus’s nasal cavity. Their eyes smolder as Papyrus’s leading shoe slides forward across the floor in a slow, smooth motion. Metatton lowers him down perpendicular in front of him, their faces neither touching or moving farther away. Your mouth falls open slowly.

Suddenly Papyrus is back upright, and they spin around clutching each other in a way that might seem wild if it wasn’t so inhumanly precise, both of their heels clacking in a way that’s visible rather than audible. The sparkles in the spotlight return, and change from pink to blue as Papyrus lifts Mettaton this time, only the robot is face down in Papyrus’s grasp so they can continue to stare at each other longingly.

_When you walk into the room  
You pull me close and we start to move_

Mettaton extends both arms and one of his legs as they start to spin, almost like this is an ice skating routine. And that’s when you realize that Papyrus is _en pointe_ in fucking _dress shoes_ , one leg bent gracefully with the shoe’s toe tipped into his knee as he spins slowly in retiré without ever breaking eye contact with Mettaton. The blue tulle skirt floats dreamlike, brushing the underside of the skeleton’s mandible.

_And we're spinning with the stars above  
And you lift me up in a wave of love_

You feel your hand creep up to cover your gaping mouth as your other arm hugs you tighter. It’s like nothing you've ever seen, which is understandable since almost everything about this dance routine is more or less physically impossible.

Mettaton slides down the front of Papyrus’s body sensually, does a full 360 spin so they’re facing each other again, then abruptly they’re off circling the floor while their feet flash faster than your eyes can follow. Bone fingers covered in thin cloth come up to touch Mettaton’s face almost hesitantly. One white point tenderly dents a flawless silver lip, just enough for it to catch the light, and your eyes fill with some indescribable emotion.

_In this world we're just beginning  
To understand the miracle of living_

“Their dancing is very beautiful, is it not?” Toriel’s voice is coming from somewhere next to you, although it’s a bit high up. It’s good you can understand her, since you don’t think you’ll be able to tear your eyes away anytime soon. Mettaton’s arm extends outward with Papyrus facing the same direction, pulling Papyrus’s arms out along with them. Despite being more or less the same height, the skeleton's knees bend enough as they dance sideways to allow his head to loll back on the robot’s shoulder, dark sockets ovaling as his teeth part in blatant, undisguised ecstasy. Mettaton smiles down at him, his black eyes smoldering mirrors, and you notice that the rose has somehow migrated to behind Mettaton’s ear.

_Maybe I wasn’t brave before_ _  
_ _But_ _I'm not afraid anymore_

You hesitate to say there could be a strangest part to this, but if there was it might be the fact that you don’t actually feel uncomfortable watching them, or like you’re somehow intruding on a private moment. Everyone here was _invited_ to see this, including you. Whatever realization the two of them are having, everything about it is right there on the dance floor, with no suggestion that their movements mimic or lead to other activities that might happen more privately. That’s what it is-it’s not _private_ , it’s an impossibly over-the-top performance that is simultaneously, _heartrendingly_ sincere.

That’s what makes it so breathtaking.

“It is always an honor to witness such a moment,” Toriel comments. You nod, still unable to manage any reply as she continues. “When two souls encounter each other, or when they have an important realization...for some, that is the same moment. For others, it comes only with time. Yet they are the same moment, in the end. Or rather, who is to say that moment _ever_ ends?”

You manage to actually drag your eyes away for long enough to look up at Toriel, whose gaze rests softly on the outrageous couple tearing up her ballroom. It looks like she has her folded arms tucked inside her apron, resting them there like a little pouch. It's cute.

You notice that only other person watching, weirdly enough, is Sans, who’s slumped on the floor near the wall on the opposite side of the dance floor. Even though he still looks utterly exhausted, his grin is soft and he...he’s actually laughing gently. You don’t think you’ve seen anyone that tired also seem so incredibly entertained.

Your eyes go back to the dancers just in time to see Mettaton dip Papyrus towards you, so deeply you wonder if the top of his skull _is_ actually kissing the floor this time. The rose has reappeared between his teeth, and his loosely blissful and upside-down sockets meet yours at the dip’s nadir. You can see Mettaton’s thumb press lightly into the tuxedo jacket where he’s being held, and Papyrus's sockets seem almost to glow again for just a moment. Probably just a trick of the light.

In what seems like slow motion, his gaze focuses in on you as he winks saucily, pulls the rose from between his teeth and with perfect aim, throws it towards you. It arcs like a rainbow through the green-spangled and sparkling space between you, still fresh and perfect, before hitting you dead square in the middle of your chest. By some miracle, you manage to grasp it without crushing it as Papyrus is yanked back upright, clutched breathlessly with his back to Mettaton’s chest while wrapped pythonlike in both the robot’s and his own arms, then spun out fast enough to make you sympathetically dizzy.

You run your fingers along the rose’s perfect stem, blink as you look down at it in disbelief. You _remember_ the rose in his teeth when he’d done the backflip to a kneeling landing, but the stem isn’t bitten through anywhere, nor chewed as you’d expect from having spent two impossibly choreographed dance routines between perfect, sharp incisors.

Although the thorns have been so carefully removed you can’t even feel where, the stem itself isn’t even dented.

Toriel claps you very lightly on the shoulder as the songs ends. “Do you not wish to see your painting? They will be at this for some time, I assure you.”

Oh, yeah. The painting you might have forgot existed during that jaw-dropping performance.

You look over to that side of the big room, and you notice that everyone else is still over there, Frisk’s hands flying in conversation, Undyne and Alphys cuddling upright while gazing at something they’re currently blocking from your view.

“Yeah,” you reply, and suddenly you’re excited all over again.

You approach hurriedly, glad your joints are having yet another good day, surprisingly enough. As you walk around the couple who’s been blocking it, your steps slow as awe overtakes you.

It’s nothing like what you were expecting.

It’s a massive, chunky square of dark blue, and the first impression is of a flower, huge. The single long oval of white bones somewhat reminiscent of the center of a passionflower is tiny, yet draws the eye with its placement in the middle of the canvas and its contrasting color. The closer you get to it, the more you can see that the creased or pleated-seeming petals are also formed entirely of long bones of various shades of blue, most dark. A haze of orange delineates the edge of each tenderly ragged petal’s edge, and everything you look at draws your eye back to the center.

“Holy shit,” you whisper quietly.

Then you jump as Undyne, who’s come up next to you, guffaws loudly.

“I’m IMPRESSED!” she hollers as she digs around in her bodice again, then hands the resultant coin backwards to Toriel without looking.

“Oh, sorry. _Sorry_ ,” you repeat to Toriel, shamefaced.

“Anyone who can give old Paps a run for his money like that, I’m glad to cover you!” she yells, then throws back her head and laughs some more. Alphys comes back up holding two small glasses, hands one to Undyne. She pulls her wife close as she takes it, and you try to process what on earth the tall blue fish lady had meant by that comment.

“Um. What do you mean?”

“Oh,” she says brightly, “you just kept him on his toes!” She’s indicating something about the edge of one of the petals, but her words still aren’t making any sense to you. She sighs lustily. “At this point, Papyrus can predict just about anything I can throw at him, literally.” she sighs. “That’s always spears, but still.”

Alphys giggles a little harder than that warrants, and you wonder if the cups they’re holding have monster alcohol in them. No one’s offered you any, so you just ignore it. Maybe they brought it themselves, and you’re not actually in the mood anyways.

“But you _really_ surprised him. I’m glad,” she says, grinning at you sincerely. Her teeth are very sharp, but nothing about her smile is particularly threatening. You brush the petals of the rose you’re holding under your chin absently.

Undyne hands her glass back to Alphys a moment then gently takes the thornless rose from your fingers. You blink as she sticks the stem in her mouth, bites through it cleanly, then lifts her chin and spits it halfway across the room. Toriel frowns a little but doesn’t object. Undyne reaches out and tucks the truncated rose behind your ear, tries to move some of your hair to keep it in place. There’s not much of it since you keep it fairly short, but the rose stays.

“I love flowers,” she sighs gently. Then a horrified looks creeps over her face.

“I mean, uh. I love... _WRESTLING_! YEAH! TIME TO WRESTLING, EVERYONE WHO WANTS TO ALSO WRESTLE!!”

She staggers a little as she reaches down to pull off her massive red high heels, and you watch as she barrels towards Mettaton and Papyrus. She’s already on the dance floor, but somehow they manage to dodge her without seeming to alter their routines at all. Not even when Papyrus tosses Mettaton about six feet above his head, pirouettes around a halfhearted swooping attack from Undyne's brandished shoes, then catches him again before dancing away from another swipe, still holding the robot above his head.

Alphys watches her, giggling and blushing. “She really l-lets it all go, sometimes. I l-l- _live_ for t-that,” she sighs sincerely. She cuts her eyes at you and offers up one of the two glasses she’s still holding. “S-s-she didn’t t-touch this one, if you w-w-want it,” she says, smirking a little. “I t-t-think she’s h-had enough, anyway.”

“No thank you,” you sigh contentedly. “I’m good.”

She shrugs a little before downing the proffered glass, then just drops her full one into the empty so they’re nested, and wanders off to get a better view of her wife… dancing?

You turns back to the painting and find yourself absorbed in it for a long time. The music and relatively tame sounds of merriment (Undyne’s shrieks notwithstanding) are oddly soothing, and you’re having an absolutely lovely time. And here you’d been all anxious about it. You notice at some point MK and Frisk have sat down on some of the chairs by the wall neat the dance floor, just sort of leaning together and watching the goings on.

Sans comes up behind you and stands at your side as you both gaze into the midnight peony his brother had spun from magic and movement. He looks pretty faded, but his eye lights still move with sharp interest over his brother’s newest artwork.

“There's a lot going on with this that I can’t see, isn’t there?” you ask, smiling sadly.

“dunno. what can you see?”

“A beautiful painting, I guess,” you sigh ponderously.

“make you feel any particular way when you look at it?”

You think about that. “It makes me think of…that day, I guess? How I felt when we had the encounter. How it seemed like, I don’t know. Papyrus has helped me so much, and I would say I don’t know why but it’s just because he’s like that, you know? He wants to.”

You hear an unfamiliar voice hollering behind you, and you turn around to see that Papyrus is now on Mettaton’s shoulders, and Frisk is on Undyne’s shoulders, each armed with a high heel and taking false swipes at each other to the beat of some pop song you don’t know. You assume the voice you didn’t recognize was Frisk, then. You smile, then turn back to Sans.

“Like maybe he’s helped me in ways I don’t even know or understand, but that’s okay because...helping me...” you frown thoughtfully. “Helping me helps him be true to...himself? It’s his connections with other people that matter most.”

You glance over at Sans, and he’s gazing into the painting.

“that’s part of it, yeah,” he replies quietly. “a monster looking at this can see that papyrus had to work hard at this, even if they weren’t there. and that you...challenged him somehow.”

You scrunch your face up at that.

“Is this some kind of...record of my memories?” You’re not sure you’re comfortable with that.

He’s shaking his head at that already, though. “nah, more like just, gives you a feeling. like reading a story, but not...in order. not specifics.”

You frown again, trying to imagine something like that.

He glances at you. “maybe...you know when you read a story, you feel like you know those people. even if they’re not real, it gives you that feeling. s’like, that’s a relationship you see through the other characters, right?”

You nod hesitantly.

“lookin at that feels like i know you because paps knows you.” he chuckles a little. “different from the way i already know you, i guess.”

“Oh,” you say hesitantly, but you’re still not entirely sure about the line between knowing you and knowing things _about_ you.

He laughs softly. “wanna see mine?”

You blink. That’s right, Alphys had said something about Sans having a painting, too, but that Papyrus had kept it. Huh.

“I’d love to see it, actually,” you reply, fascinated. “Is it here?”

“no?” he’s grinning, and his eye lights dart at a convenient potted ficus creating a shadowed corner in the large room. “won’t matter if we pop out for a sec, though.”

You huff out an amused breath. You really do want to see it.

“Okay. The same as before?”

He nods, glances around and holds his hand out. He pulls you forward a few steps, and you feel the same oddly vertiginous lurch. To your surprise, when you open your eyes, you’re in Papyrus’s bedroom.

“Wait, this one’s...yours?” you squeak.

He seems taken aback at the intensity of your reaction. “yeah?” he answers, the tops of his sockets raised.

The light are on overhead, magic powered, you think, and you creep closer to the work you’d dubbed a masterpiece all those months ago.

“It’s just, I don’t know? I guess this one’s still my favorite. I saw it when I stayed here that...that night.” You press your lips together. “Is it okay that we're in here?”

“heh, yeah,” he replies, eye sockets flattening at the bottom. “he doesn’t actually spend that much time in here. doesn’t sleep, remember?” He sighs. “just keeps the stuff he likes here. an’ he likes showing off his stuff.” He glances at you, grins. “no boys or girls allowed, though.”

You give him a weird look, but he just laughs more.

“I don’t know why, but it’s like...so soothing?” you muse.

“huh. never thought of it like that.”

He stops laughing, and for some reason his voice sounds ...heavy, in a way.

“Yeah,” you continue thoughtfully. “Like the ocean. I mean, sure it _looks_ like the ocean but more than that, it feels like it, you know? When you’re near it, you feel calm and steady. Even if you don’t know exactly what’s in there. Maybe it won’t matter, or ever come up. I don’t know.”

“huh.” You look over at Sans, and he’s just staring into the painting too, but something about his face seems off.

“so, i was gonna say. if you’re a monster, you could get the impression that this whole thing mighta been a bad idea. might call it ‘hubris’. why even take a chance like that in the first place? but the longer you look at it, the more you realize there wasn’t ever any danger. makes you see why being brave is important. that’s what you see there,” and his hand comes out of his pocket to point to the area that looks like a sky, maybe an orange sun buried under layers of blue-grey cloud cover. Except, you know. Made of bones.

“Wow,” you reply, fascinated.

You’re actually really impressed, and you turn to Sans. But he’s already looking at you, and his sockets are unsettlingly dark. His eye lights barely exist, and the grooves under them are shadowed even more than usual. He _really_ looks terrible.

“but maybe being brave isn’t...for everyone. ‘cause.” He blinks heavily, and sways on his feet a little as he continues.  
“here’s what no one can see. if my brother hit me even once, even on accident. i’d be dust before the bones hit the floor. if anyone did. does. i'd just be...” He waves his hand vaguely.

It’s like someone sucked all the air out of the room. Or maybe just your lungs, or maybe it’s just the way you can’t seem to break the eye contact.

“so maybe, y’know. don’t ever hit me.”

You start to take a deep breath, but realize you don’t actually need it.

“You don’t have to pull stunts with me. I don’t fucking _hit people_.”

He’s looking at you, but it seems like he doesn’t even see you. Like maybe he sees something else.

“think that means the same thing to everyone? you ever wonder what makes someone count as ‘people’?” he asks quietly.

You can’t break his gaze, ad you find yourself wondering if he’d ask you that if he’d ever spent even five minutes in an office that smells like pine cleaner and corn chips, getting handed a stack of papers thicker than your wrist while someone explains to you that you’ve been denied the bare minimum you need just to survive again, basically accuses you of forging signatures, and their bored face makes you realize just how much they don’t care that you’re seventeen and your mother’s taking an awfully long time to die of cancer, making everything very inconvenient for everyone involved. Ever had to try and look innocent even though you are? Ever had to just take your rejected forms and leave? Why are you even thinking about this right now? It’s fucked up.

“No,” you answer shortly.

Whatever the hell is wrong with him seems like it just drains right out suddenly, and he looks at you, sick and horrified.

You sigh, and pull your phone out of you pocket.

“You’re not okay,” you inform him, pulling up Papyrus’s contact.

“i, uh-” he looks like he’s trying to hold out his hands to wave you down or stop you or something, but they’re shaking too hard and the text’s already sent.

“You need Papyrus, right?” you say, not trying to get close to him or anything. Just being there. His bony fingers are rattling and rasping against his face, and he shuffles over to the bed and sits down on it without looking. He sighs shakily.

“didn’t wanna ruin the party,” he mumbles vaguely.

“I don’t know,” you say kindly, wondering how far this place is from Toriel’s. You hadn’t really been paying attention on the drive there but it hadn’t seemed too far from your place. “Seemed to me like everyone had a lot of fun, and it’s already late.”

Sans leaves one hand over his face, and with the other reaches back and draws his hood up slowly. Although the hood comes forward far enough to hide his skull, the other hand still comes back up to his face again, rattling some more. He doesn’t answer. You get it, so you just lean against the wall and wait until you hear the door opening downstairs, light footsteps ascending to the second floor. That didn't take very long at all.

Papyrus pushes the door open slowly, still clad in his tuxedo although his bow tie is undone, the ends of the bone-printed strip of cloth hanging over in front. He sees you and Sans, and exhales very quietly. He he walks over to his brother without a word, kneels down, and gathers him up in his arms. You couldn't really say what his facial expression is conveying but it feels appropriate for the situation nonetheless. When he stands, one of Sans’s hands is clutching his lapel and his face is turned inward, hidden in the tux jacket. Papyrus walks past you with a polite nod, exits the room and goes downstairs. A few minutes later, you hear the TV turn on very quietly.

You go and sit in the spot Sans had vacated, since you don’t really know what you’re supposed to do now. You can’t exactly walk home at the moment, and both brothers are otherwise occupied. You feel bad for being here for this at all, in fact, and you’re not sure if you want to go downstairs and just stare at them while they do their thing. You look around at the shelves lining the room, sighing at the assortment of knickknacks, figurines, and framed photos. You stand up again cautiously as one of the latter catches your eye. As you approach you notice it seems to have cursive writing in some sort of silvery pen taking up most of the top right corner.

It’s a photograph of Papyrus and Mettaton, and you’d have thought it was professionally taken if it wasn’t for the fact that a bit of tubelike, silver arm extends outwards along the side, and there’s what might be a blur of white glove in the corner. Mettaton is clad in a flawlessly classy, stiff-collared tuxedo with a glittery pink bow tie, and his steel grin glitters smugly.

Papyrus appears to be wearing a t-shirt that’s printed on the front to _look_ like a tuxedo, and a blue headband with stiff cat ears attached adorns his otherwise bare skull. He’s leaning in towards Mettaton and winking outrageously, a peace sign tilted near his cheek. Blue sequins and tulle are visible in a short strip below the hem of the t-shirt. You blink in surprise, wondering when they’d switched outfits, or if...wait, what? You actually don’t even have a theory for what this could be about. You read the script in the corner.

“LOVELY to meet my BIGGEST FAN! All my best to PAPYRUS! Love, METTATON!”

Had you really been there for the big night they finally...figured out something? How they felt about each other? When on earth had this photo been taken? You try and parse what you’d seen on the dance floor with Papyrus’s disingenuously coquettish behavior at the barn, or his oddly affected hero-worship before Mettaton’s speech, and then just give up. It’s been a long night.

You hear a noise behind you, and when you turn around Frisk is in the doorway. “Hello,” you gesture hesitantly. Frisk seems a little tired but very happy as they rub their eye, then gesture a greeting back as they approach. They huff a little as they see what you’re looking at, you assume since they’re wearing the same outfit Papyrus is wearing in the photo...and...come to think of it, hadn’t Alphys been wearing the exact same tux as Papyrus tonight?

“Do you know if...is Sans going to be okay?” you ask, still concerned.

They blink at you, seeming surprised. “Of course. Papyrus has him downstairs now.”

“Is it...” you don’t want to pry, but… “Do you know what happened to him?” you try.

“Nothing happened,” they reply, nonplussed, then they seem to realize something. “Sans probably hasn’t been able to sleep,” they explain. “That always happens when he works too much, and then he gets all wobbly and can’t sleep even worse, and Papyrus has to heal him a little first.”

They smile at you reassuringly, but it seems like there’s still a lot of unanswered questions there. “He probably should have come home when he was here two days ago, but I guess you can’t always predict everything.” And there’s a few _more_ unanswered questions for good measure. They glance down at the photo again and smile, and you decide not to grill them about it, even though you still have no clue what on earth Sans does for “work.”

“When did they take this picture?” you ask instead. “Did they like, switch outfits or something later?”

Frisk frowns in thought. “Almost twelve years ago, I think? It was right after the barrier came down. Papyrus went to Mettaton’s restaurant for its Grand Closening.” They fingerspell that for clarity, but that’s...um.

“Are they...have they been together all this time? Twelve years?”

Frisk huffs their laugh, but also scratches under their chin in thought. They wave their hand tentatively, stop, then start over.

“I think their favorite part was meeting each other for the first time, and realizing… whatever they realized. So they never stopped.”

“How...does that work?” you ask, dumbfounded.

Frisk shrugs, unconcerned. “People can do whatever they want. They’re happy. Speaking of which,” they glance toward where the downstairs is, “do you want to just stay over? I mean, if you really need to go home I can take you, but...we have pajamas here you can use. And even these weird disposable toothbrush things Papyrus always buys for camping trips.”

They frown a little uneasily. “A _lot_ of them. He uses them _all over_.”

“Um,” you glance around the room, feeling generally out of your depth on a several levels. Then you just sigh and look at Frisk.

“Sure.”

“You don’t have to stay in _here_ ,” they gesture a little indulgently. “Usually we just get blankets and sleep in the living room together when it’s like this. Like a slumber party. If the TV doesn’t bother you? Papyrus likes his shows on.”

You notice Frisk’s switched to using their personal name signs for everyone with you, and you’re not sure when exactly it happened. Papyrus’s resembles the gesture he makes when he puts his hand against his chest as he’s about to announce something grand and important.

“Yeah,” you sigh, feeling a warm glow in your chest again for no particular reason. “I’ll take both. All three?”

When you head downstairs after changing into the almost floor length t-shirt you’ve been given, you hear popcorn microwaving noisily from the kitchen. Papyrus, still very dashing in his tux, is seated on the end of the couch holding the tiny-seeming bundle of his brother as casually as bag of laundry. Sans’s socks and slippers have been removed in the meantime, but his hood is still pulled over his head and face, with his hands inside it too, somehow.

You carry the bundle of your clothing with all your medications, phone, and other important stuff tucked inside, and come over to settle on the side of the couch not occupied by Papyrus. You sit there a moment yanking your phone out, belatedly remembering to text Diane that you don't need a ride home and you're fine, then shove it back in the bundle. What you assume is Frisk’s blanket is already spread out next to the brothers, and they return right then with a big bowl of popcorn before plopping down next to Papyrus and laying down. Some other episode of _It’s Mettaton!_ is playing, and the captions are already on at the bottom of the screen.

Frisk is asleep in less than ten minutes, and the bowl of popcorn sits untouched. You already brushed your teeth with the weird toothbrush thing while trying firmly not to think about Papyrus’s ‘all over’, so you also aren’t very interested in it. Oh, well. It smells nice, adds a good ambience. Also decorative. Pop-pourri. You giggle, then glance over at Sans, hoping whatever is happening is doing the trick and he’s asleep.

“DID YOU HAVE FUN?” Papyrus asks at a relatively tame volume. Neither Sans not Frisk stir, so you answer above a whisper.

“That was the best time I’ve ever had,” you reply sincerely. “Again.”

Papyrus looks like he knows exactly what you mean as he nods in satisfaction, and you suppose that he does.

"You're the best dancer I've ever seen in my life," you add.

"I KNOW," he says, managing to seem both wistful and satisfied.

“I never figured out the theme, though,” you inform him a little sadly. “For both the painting and the dancing, I mean.”

“I THOUGHT IT WAS OBVIOUS,” he replies, unconcerned, but doesn’t continue. You’re feeling pretty bushwhacked, so you pull the blanket you’ve been given up over yourself, grab a couch pillow to stuff under your head, and settle in. The TV’s actually really quiet, and you can’t understand anything Mettaton says with your eyes closed, so it’s almost like white noise.

“I LOVE THEM BOTH, OF COURSE,” you hear half-subliminally just as you drift off.

***

When you get home the next day, you find the note Papyrus had pinned to a bag of cinnamon bunnies for you a long time ago. Looks like it fell down somewhere between the couch and the wall. When you pull it out, it still has folds in the bottom but also...there’s more of them? It’s kind of a heavy letter. Weighty, in fact.

Both Papyrus and Sans had been profoundly asleep when you’d woken up, but Frisk was awake and had made a third round of coffee to share with you this time. Sans seemed better, or at least he’d managed to slide out of the fetal position he’d been in the night before and halfway over the arm of the couch facedown, hooded skull hanging. Papyrus just slept sitting up with his head leaned back against the couch, jaw slack and snoring like a bony buzzsaw.

Frisk explained that they might both stay that way for a considerable time longer, despite the fact that it had been almost noon, and then had driven you home in Papyrus’s car. They weren’t as conscientious a driver as their relative, but still managed the less-than-a-mile across the campus without any actionable property damage.

You open your desk drawer and slide the letter inside.

You close the drawer. Then you open it again, and take the thick folded paper back out. You pull the folds down, but somehow the entire paper is blank as you keep going, and going...until at the very bottom, there are two words written in his spidery capitals.

“THANK YOU"

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jsyk the first ten minutes of the nutcracker is basically 20 twirling, bouncing ballerinas holding these ridiculous huge floppy dolls up over their heads


	12. astrophysical proximity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Shakey Graves - Family And Genus](https://youtu.be/T4LF7vx9oSk)

Sans’s soft snores provide an oddly calming and rhythmic audio background to the show he’s fallen asleep during, the theme song of which is currently tinkling tinnily from your laptop. You glance up at it from time to time where it’s perched on your pillow, but rather than following the captions you’re actually going through your work documents on your viewer and getting some organization done, even though tonight’s the start of your off days.

You glance over at him and notice he’s actually wriggled out of his hoodie at some point, and although the discarded garment is bunched up under one shoulder, it doesn’t seem to be bothering him at all. You smile as you catch one of your favorite lines from this episode, and flick your eyes back to the laptop to finish watching that particular scene. Your mind wanders anyhow, and you set your viewer absently onto your nightstand.

You think your favorite thing about Sans’s company is that you never feel like he’s doing anything other than exactly what he wants to be doing. It takes a lot of pressure off that you often feel during social interactions. You never wonder if he’s getting antsy to leave, or if he’s waiting for you to offer him something. If he wants to leave, he’ll go, and if he needs anything, he’ll ask.

_And if he’s tired, he’ll fall asleep_ , you think, glancing over at him again. He’s laying on his back with an arm thrown over his head, the long white bones gleaming dully in light from your lamp. It’s still afternoon, but it’s the kind of early autumn overcast outside that makes you keep a light or two on even in the day. What there is of the faint light from outside adds a bluish cast from one direction, while your lamp is warmer in tone from the other. The dual pale blue/soft yellow lighting effect on a living bone surface is interesting. You idly wonder if he’d want to sit for a portrait sometime.

And that’s the funny thing; he’s made of _bones_. There’s no throat, tongue, or lungs in there, so where exactly does the snore come from? Does he snore for the same reasons humans would? Maybe the balled up sweater under him is knocking something out of alignment. You lean a little closer to him, trying to hear it better, and you flick your hand out to turn off the show so you can hear. It doesn’t sound exactly like a human snore; there’s nothing fleshy about it. It’s drier, somehow, almost a buzzing sound. Like a temperamental bee lives in his ribcage somewhere and is getting increasingly annoyed by his persistent inactivity. The Papyrus of bees.

You can’t help your stifled laugh, and one of his eye sockets opens languidly, the white point coming into focus in its depths.

“something funny happen?” he inquires, voice muddled and deepened even further by sleep. He’s got a rather indolent smile on his face at being awoken by laughter, even someone else’s.

“Just wondering where the snores come from,” you reply, moving back as his phalanges click over his other socket before it opens as well. He leans up to press his water glass to his teeth a moment before shoving the hoodie out of the bed and laying back down. “Sounds like a bee or something,” you add with a grin.

“can’t be anywhere near as bad as paps’s snoring,” he says, one of his hands coming up under his chin. “that sounds like a lawnmower. gotta say those are my least my favorite part of living in a place that can grow grass. why they always do it so early?” he mock-gripes.

“Yeah, not my favorite way to wake up either,” you agree, then yawn hugely, shoving the back of your wrist between your teeth. “You’re really selling me on that nap lifestyle, man,” you add, then remove the laptop and other accumulated debris from the top of your coverlet. Once it’s cleared, you wiggle the rest of the way down between the sheets and turn to face him. The fact that it’s not pain or symptomatic fatigue gnawing at your bones makes the light sleepiness you’re experiencing feel almost decadently indulgent, and you sigh with contentment.

“seems like you’re feeling better these days?” he asks, casual but also a little hesitant, as if he’s keenly aware it’s a more personal question than most people realize.

“Heh,” you laugh softly. “You know, I really am.”

He smiles more comfortably, satisfied to hear it. His eye lights sharpen a moment.

“wanna cuddle? might be nice even if you’re feelin’ better.”

“You know what? Yeah,” you reply, pulling your arms up in front of you and loosely fisting your hands as you waddle your upper body forward, towards him. He’s kinda high up on the pillow so even though he’s shorter, he’s looking down at you across the remaining space as you tuck one arm in front of your chest, then slowly wrap the other across his ribcage. His bony arm comes over your shoulder and rests on your back, and you exhale slowly, any remaining tension leaving your body. His lightly stiffened fingers rub a small circle on your upper back for a moment before relaxing.

“It’s weird,” you ramble, “I heard so many bullshit lines about changing my diet, for years and years. People who didn’t know anything about me would say the stupidest shit. Like, ‘oh, my cousin cured her Lupus with grapefruit’, that kinda crap. Feels ironic, but I think changing my diet to half-madge really is making a big difference.”

“huh?”

You laugh softly. “It’s human doctor slang. ‘Half magic.’ Like, about half of what I eat now is monster food. That’s all it means.”

“heh. you mean the stuff I bring over?”

“I definitely have you all to thank for most of it, but I started going to the market downtown too.”

“you think that’s it?” he rumbles softly.

“Mmm hmm,” you agree, then look up at his eye lights, which have fuzzed out considerably in the meantime. Looking at them for a long time doesn’t bother you nearly as much as the piercing stare of gelid human eyeballs. You wonder why for a moment but, you don’t care all that much. It’s nice to just _be_ more, and think less.

“It’s so nice to feel... _not bad_ for a change,” you say out loud, then tuck the arm you’re laying on across your belly so you can wiggle closer with another sigh. Your other hand is behind his back, but you keep your fingers tucked in carefully instead of letting them dangle near his ribs, since that usually seems to make him nervous.

“It’s nice to just go and _do_ things once in a while. If I want to. Painting, visiting, whatever. Even working. But the best part...” you trail off as you feel his bony chin rest on the top your your head. “Mm. But the best part is _this_. I’m having a good day, but I’m just being lazy _cause I want to_.”

You hear him laugh softly, the breath huffing out of his nasal cavity scented with something like thyme and his usual dry, almost chalky smell, stirring your hair against your brow. It makes you smile and scrunch your nose up, and you rub your forehead against his chin to soothe the tickle a little.

“I’m not used to having that,” you continue wonderingly. “I usually base what I’m doing on how I’m feeling, or if I...If I _can_ or not, and that decides my day. Right now, I _could_ go and do something if I wanted to. But instead, _this_ is exactly what I want to be doing. _Nothing_.”

“same here,” he chuckles in quiet surprise. “not a lot a folks have that kinda appreciation for some good old-fashioned nothing.”

It’s still a unique experience to not have to worry about understanding what he says even though you can’t see his face at all. Your eyes are closed, actually, but then you think you _do_ want to see his face, because it’s cool. You untuck your forehead and tilt your head back to look. He’s interesting from underneath.

The longer you know him, the less his face looks all that much like a human skull; the less it looks like a human _anything_ to be honest. Despite being more or less shaped like one. You can see some of his lower teeth from this angle, and the joint where his jaw looks to be mostly fused and not very flexible. It’s a lot different than Papyrus’s, although that seems an unfair comparison despite the fact that he’s the only other living skeleton you’ve ever seen.

It’s also interesting how the inside of his skull, while you can tell there _is_ an inside, is shrouded in that inexplicable darkness punctuated only by the expressive white points in his otherwise empty sockets. They’re not visible when looking in from anywhere else, either; only when you look into his eyes from the front. Their current expression being curiosity laced with the beginnings of slight discomfort at the intense scrutiny.

“Your face? Is _awesome_ ,” you grin up at him. He snorts in surprise, then falls into helpless sounding laughter.

“ _heh_ heh heh…. _what_? why?”

You exhale, and give him the truest reason you can think of.

“Because it doesn’t stress me out.”

He’s looking at you like that’s the absolute last answer he was expecting, so you crack up again. “I mean it, though,” you say between giggles. “Human faces have way too much going on. Nose hair. Eyelashes. Pores. They’re _weird_. There’s so much….goo?”

Now he’s laughing too.

“It’s true!” you urge, and you realize you’re pulling him a little closer again, and he’s doing the same. Indulging your mutual curiosities.

“Big, gooey eyes that always feel like they don’t see you at all, or they see right inside you sometimes. It’s weird,” you repeat helplessly, knowing it’s true even if you can’t explain it better. Oh, well.

He tilts his head down so you’re looking directly into his eye sockets and the points floating in their depths.

“these don’t bother you?” he asks quietly, but with humor still in his voice.

“Nope,” you answer honestly, watching them flicker with unreadable emotion.

He brings his face even closer until his forehead and nasal bone are resting against you, and you’re staring directly into his sockets. “you suuure?”

You giggle again, feeling silly and relaxed. You roll your forehead against his lightly, fascinated by the way there’s no sense of depth inside his eyes. There’s no telling how close or far away the white points are, or what angle you’re looking at them from. The way you can’t tell exactly what they are.

“No, they’re… they’re like _stars_ ,” you half-whisper, astounded to realize finally what they remind you of. Their substance spreads out into a larger and more diffuse shape, making your eyes try to re-focus on them.

“seriously?”

He sounds so surprised, and this close it’s less like hearing and more like feeling. His breath ghosts against your face, and his forehead… _changes_ somehow- the strangeness of impervious bone flexing easily against your skin surprises you into another quiet laugh.

“Do that again?” you ask, and you feel him...frowning? You’re not sure. “It feels neato.”

You’ve never noticed his bones having any particular temperature before, but right now, they feel warm.

“They really _are_ like stars,” you continue, entranced. “Millions of light years away, you can’t even manage to convince your mind they’re real. How can something that far away really exist in a way that matters to you? It’s incomprehensible. And at the same time they make you feel like you could just reach out and touch them if you wanted to,” you ramble blithely. “Your eyes are _just_ like that.” You feel his nasal bone tracing your nose gently, and the angle you’re viewing from shifts.

You scoot a little closer, one arm tucked tight and low against your belly and the other curved over his ribcage, and you feel your chest touch his lightly for a moment. His hard, bafflingly flexible palm touches the back of your neck, changing the angle again. You guide him, tilting your face so your fleshy cheekbone touches his bare one, noticing the way those lights spread and change when you move, holding your gaze delicately in a manner so unlike the way a human eye focuses. You laugh softly in wonder, and feel a pulling sensation of giddiness almost like when you drank the monster alcohol.

“But stars exist whether you believe in them or not. They don’t need you, they don’t hate you, they can just be outside all that messiness. Reliable. That's the best part, isn’t it?” You feel his breath against your nose and mouth, but he doesn’t speak.

“How does it feel to have stars inside you, Sans?”

“i...um,” he says, unable to come up with anything resembling a response to that, not even a joke, but you still both laugh quietly together at your own ridiculousness. It’s so nice, just to be silly. Just to be here, alive.

“Mmmm,” you sigh wordlessly, expending your mirth as you feel that same giddiness rising again, an almost magnetic feeling drawing at you. It feels like the ASL sign for “like it,” somehow. Sans is still huffing amused breaths through his nasal cavity, caressing your face with his.

“What is that?” you murmur absently, and press your chest against his gently a moment to indicate what you mean.

Sans sucks his breath in a little suddenly through his nasal cavity, and he draws back from you decisively before he lets it out. Sounds a little uneven. You pull your arms back and clasp them in front of you.

“sorry,” he says, looking to the side. “i-i didn’t, uh. realize.”

You look at him for a long moment.

“Did I do something to bother you?”

He laughs. Short, but soft.

“nope. kinda the opposite.” his eye lights flicker, and he falls silent. “i had no idea that was happening,” he says quietly, “but also never woulda occurred to me you’d be able to _feel_ it.” His face looks a bit iridescent for a moment, aided by the fading blue from the window. It’s getting dark outside rapidly, and you realize he sounds almost nervous. For him, at least.

You gaze at his cotton-clad chest again, remembering the drawing sensation you’d felt.

“Oh,” you say softly. “Oh.”

“just means I like you. sorry.” He glances away briefly, then returns his gaze to you with a hesitant smile. “liked what we were doing.” He even manages to shrug while lying on his side. The tiny bones in his hands curve delicately in front of him, relaxed against your dark duvet like pearls.

Of course, _now_ your heart thuds in your chest, and you feel mildly annoyed about it for some reason. At the same time… although you’re not really sure what’s going on, you realize you very much would like the opportunity to find out. A deep and patient warmth floods your belly suddenly, and you smile at Sans.

“I liked it, too.”

He smiles back easily.

“Could I...feel it again?” you ask hopefully.

His eye lights flicker and shrink, and his sockets widen as if he really wasn’t expecting that sort of response. He doesn’t really seem shy or anything, but at the same time you’re in pretty unfamiliar territory and the last thing you want to do is freak him out.

“Only if that’s something you’d want,” you clarify.

“you, um. okay. so, in this context, that would be an… intimate touch,” he states slowly, closely watching your face.

You understand and appreciate why he’s making that clear, but all the verbal answers to that statement you can think of would sound weird. You meet his eyes and nod once, twice. You sign “yes.” You understand.

He looks at you for a long moment as a gentle, genuine smile softens his fixed grin. “wow, ok.”

His eye sockets are half-moons again as he extends his arms toward you, beckoning with his topmost hand.

“yeah, ok. c’mere.”

You feel a twinge of ambiguous excitement as you scoot towards him, but he doesn’t throw himself on you, there’s no crushing of bodies or anything like that. Which is definitely just as well considering his bones are very hard, even with your clothes between you. Instead, you lay your head on the pillow with his humerus under your neck, and his other hand brushes your hair lightly as he touches his nasal bone delicately to your face again, drawing it down your nose and across your nostrils.

“can’t believe you told me my eyes were like _stars_ ,” he says incredulously. “no one ever said anything like that to me in my life. you even know what that _does_ to me?”

“I do now,” you can’t help but laugh. His low chuckle joins yours as he strokes the side of your face with his bone fingertips. They feel so alien, smooth and insidiously magnetic, it draws a shudder up out of you before you even realize it’s happening.

“you’re so...soft,” he says, wonder seeping into in his voice.

“Mmmm,” you equivocate, a little embarrassed.

“you okay?” he asks quietly, his breath slow and sweet on your lips.

“Very okay,” you reply. “Just...it’s literally impossible for me to form expectations? So that’s... exciting?”

“huh,” he half-whispers, cupping your cheek and caressing your face with his, tilting his head to look into your eyes again. “makes sense. relatable, even.”

You’ve got your hands drawn up to your chest, loosely holding them together since you actually don’t know what to do with them. What you’re feeling isn’t the same as being physically aroused, although you’re beginning to suspect you’re also _that_ , too. When he touches your face again, you lean into his hand a little, press your lips to it, and grip your own hands together a little more tightly.

Sans makes a quiet noise, “hm.” He takes one of your hands gently, and lifts it up until your thumb strokes his zygomatic process. His eye lights are the most diffuse you’ve ever seen while you feel his face with your fingers. Your belly flutters considering how much of a gesture of trust this feels like, and it’s very exciting to touch the face you’d been admiring just a short while ago. He keeps his phalanges lightly at the back of your hand while you explore the arch of his maxilla, caress the depth of his temple behind the ridge of his eye socket. He turns his face into your hand much like you had with his, then he presses his teeth to your palm gently, smooth as glass, but warm.

You feel his uneven inhalation, then his eye lights focus again, flicker.

“is that your, uh...blood, there? ...wiggling?”

You can’t help it, you turn your face toward the pillow and snort with laughter.

“D-do you mean, heh, my _pulse_?” you manage.

“s’that what that is?” he says, gently holding up your hand and looking at your wrist curiously. You push your face into the pillow to try and smother the giggles, but they won’t stop.

“on second thought, feels like i reeeeally should have known that,” he ponders, then gives up and starts laughing with you.

“oh, man,” he chuckles, plopping his head back down next to yours and just holding your hand gently in his. His face is half-smashed into the pillow but he glances sidelong at you playfully. “this is the part where i gotta admit i don’t know what we’re doing, isn’t it.”

“Me neither,” you reply, still grinning. “At all. The one thing I do know is, you s-sure do make my blood w-w-wiggle...” Oh god, you’re losing it again, and his low chuckle is right there with you. The residual tension dissipates. Another minute, and he sighs, his sockets half mast with mirth and something else much softer. Maybe it’s just that the lights in them have increased in diameter again.

“you make me wiggle, too,” he says with the same expression on his face. “wanna feel?”

“I really do,” you smile.

He takes your hand and places it flat on his sternum, puts his own on top of it gently with a deep sigh. There’s no heartbeat in there, which doesn’t surprise you since he doesn’t have any internal organs. What does surprise you is that there is _something_ , and it’s almost as heady as the fact that he’s allowing you to touch his body with your hands and fingers. Something warm and magnetic, like the gentle pressure in the air above a heating element. Alive, and lively, and filled with intent. Like magic.

“Why does it feel so good?” you say before you realize you’re going to.

His breath catches, and you glance up at his face. His expression looks like how you felt, a good kind of sleepy, or maybe just relaxed. Calm and happy. His eyes are soft and fixed on you, and his bony fingers stroke the back of your hand delicately.

“you really _can_ feel it,” he says quietly. “guess i thought-i dunno,” he breathes out a little unevenly. “if you were able to, uh...” He uses his other hand to make a drawing motion away from his chest without removing the protective one over the spot your fingers press at his sternum. Understanding fills you like slow honey; the motion he’s making means drawing out a soul. Exposing it.

“i’d usually be anticipating the possibility, feeling trust. i know you can’t, but i don’t feel any different about this.” he presses your fingers. “i didn’t expect that,” he sighs sweetly. “mm,” he adds, closing his eye sockets for a languorous moment.

“This is a private spot to touch you? To touch a monster’s body?” you ask, enjoying the gentle brush of smooth phalanges against the backs of your fingers.

One of his eyes opens and he exhales, smiling. “no? not like everyone has ‘this spot’...” The white point sharpens a little.

“but it _definitely_ is when they feel the way i do right now,” he answers simply. Then both eyes open and he looks down, his expression drifts toward something almost familiar. Desire smolders there, but it’s tempered into something else by peace and patience. “or if _you_ do,” he adds throatily.

Which is when you realize hand you’d been holding loosely fisted in front of your chest started mirroring the gesture on your own chest, absentminded fingertips searching idly beneath your collarbone. It makes you wonder what it would feel like if he touched you there now, while you feel this way... while you touch him like this, while he feels this way. It makes your face heat pleasantly, a heat that flows down to where your fingers touch your chest.

“That’s fucking bananas,” you whisper absently, and now he’s grinning at you.

“I mean,” you say, then clear your throat gently. You don’t move your hand away from your own chest, either. “We’re not actually, uh, doing the thing?” He exhales softly, and you continue. “It’s just the introduction of the idea. And you feel so good, even though you know I can’t...make you come out? I can’t even imagine how intense the other stuff with you must be.”

Sans’s fingers touch the wrist of the hand you have pressed against his sternum, glide up your bare forearm, over your sleeve, come to rest on the point of your shoulder. They give it a gentle squeeze as he moves closer to you, the movement causing you to reflexively splay your fingers open against him, proximity increasing the pressure. He shudders, breath quickening as his smooth face caresses yours softly.

“you say you don’t know what you’re doing, but you sure know what to say to _me_ ,” he sighs, breath tickling your upper lip. You’re staring right into his eye sockets again, fixing on the directionless points in endless darkness.

“Can I hold you more?” you ask.

You feel him nod against your forehead, so you pull your fingers away from your own chest and put that arm around him. You very gently fold your fist against his spine as you pull him close; you can feel the hardness of his ribs under thin cotton, the texture as your arm moves up suggesting the spaces between them.

Your open hand is almost wedged between your bodies, and when the tips of your fingers graze where his ribs attach to his breastbone he shudders, exhales raggedly. This is an incredibly erotic embrace, and you wonder why it took you so long to catch on. His body is nothing like yours, and it’s good to have it pressed against you like this. It’s like you can _feel_ how much he wants to be there. His breath catches again when you slide your hand up his chest maybe half an inch, and this time you hear a faint noise you can’t quite place. Maybe it’s just tree branches in the wind outside.

“that feels good,” he whispers unsteadily. “it’s... different. are you doing something? a human thing?” He doesn’t stop tracing your face with his nasal bone, but you still your hand on his chest, then move it away. You touch his fingers with yours.

“Not that I know of. I thought this is what monsters do. Are you okay?” you ask.

“heh. yeah,” he says with a soft but slightly strangled laugh, and you lift your face as he pushes his underneath. You stroke the side of his skull with your cheek in what you hope is a soothing manner. “jus’ my soul trying to jump into your hand,” he replies unevenly, then you hear him breathe raggedly into the pillow. “sorry. geez, sorry.”

You’re trying to figure out why he’s so apologetic. It really doesn’t seem like him at all. Unless…

You shift slowly until you’re leaned up on one elbow, and curl your body over him protectively.

“Sans,” you whisper at his temporal bone. “Did you just say something vulgar, apologize for it, then apologize again when you realized I have absolutely no idea what it means?”

“okay, ’s not fair if you do everything to get me there, then read me back the notes,” he snorts helplessly.

“If I couldn’t figure out at least that much, I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing this at all,” you admit. “Maybe it’s... when I touch you, it’s intense because there’s a question I don’t know how to ask that you’d normally being expecting. Like you’re stuck on the edge of something.”

You nudge your body forward a little, and he pulls his face out of the pillow and rolls onto his back with a sigh. You lean over him and slowly bring your face down to his, using the tip of your nose to caress the bones there as he’d done with you. It’s not like kissing, and it doesn’t make you feel the same, but it feels very, very good nonetheless. Like you’re focusing your feelings and expressing them gently onto each other. Heady and intimate, very controlled. Not desperate and clutching like...

You blink, pull back slightly to look into his sockets again.

“Have you never done soul things with humans?”

He meets your eyes evenly. “nope,” he replies shortly and without elaboration.

“And I haven’t done this literally at all.” You smile, and don’t press. “I was wrong. We did form expectations.”

You bring your left hand up and sort of hover it. “May I?”

“yeah,” he exhales fervently, then sucks his breath back in as your touch his chest the way you had been before. You move your hand up very slightly as your spread your fingers, grazing the very tips of your fingers and thumb over what would be costal cartilage on a human. He shudders, and you hear the barely-there soft clacking again. It’s coming from his body, and it’s definitely doing something interesting to the way you’re feeling right now. It’s good.

“Does it still make your soul want to come out?” you ask softly.

“like you wouldn’t believe.” He sounds almost faint.

You take your hand away, but only to pick up his bony one and place it where yours had been.

“I’d like it if you wanted to show me,” you say gently.

His eye lights fuzz out out as he looks up, contrasting with his incredulous expression.

“you... want to see me?”

“I’d love that,” you reply, and remove your hand from overtop his.

“that’s, uh. wow.” he says huskily. “yeah.”

He tenses the arm that had been under your body around you to pull you closer, thin fingers firm at your waist. You lean forward while still making sure not to crowd him, anticipation and excitement blooming on your tongue like sugar. He explores his sternum delicately with bony phalanges, expression introverted and almost dreamy, then draws them back with the same sort of motion he’d demonstrated earlier.

This time, a glowing white shape follows them, hovers inches away. A heart with the point up, the two curves below meeting like a perfect cupid’s bow. It seems almost frail, with a faint iridescence that reminds you of the way the surface of his face looks when he’s having especially strong emotions. You really want to look at his face now to see if they match but you can’t seem to pull your eyes away from his soul. It’s so ethereal, and still more _real_ than anything else here at the same time. His distals hovering near it reflect and enhance its luster. The curve of his hand, achingly protective and positioned like he’s presenting it to you at the same time makes you bite your lip to stifle a noise. The sight twists your insides strangely, and you try to remember how to breathe.

“This the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” you whisper tightly.

A soft exhale. “s’just me.” The low, harmonic tones in his voice make you shiver.

You finally manage to pull your eyes away from his luminous vulnerability to look at his face. His eye lights are fuzzy and peaceful, still punctuated with soft yearning as they somehow manage to gaze at you, instead of being locked on to his ultimate expression of self floating inches above. Your mouth opens, but you’re speechless. His breathing loses its steadiness as you both bask in the light of his soul.

“you really...can’t see it, huh,” he says very quietly after a moment. “but you still want this.”

It isn’t a question, but something about him seems uncertain. Your eyes drift back to his soul like a slow-acting but insistent magnet, and you wish you knew what to do to to reassure him, or express how moving this experience is.

“I wish I could explain how I feel right now,” you whisper back. “I don’t have words for this.” A hot tear dismayingly escapes your eyelid, and you wipe at it with your still-fisted fingers before bringing it back to your chest.

“You always make me feel so happy and comfortable, a-and safe,” you say, doing your best to put how you feel into your voice.

He looks at you, slightly pained, now. Conflicted.

“you make me feel that way, too,” he admits. “’m not used to it.” You wish you could see whatever it is that is going on with his soul. You wish it could tell you what to do.

Sans looks back at himself, and his eye lights slowly focus in on something. His teeth separate slightly, and whatever it is seems to be drawing more and more of his attention as he frowns slightly. You bite your lip, and think back to your own experiences. You can hardly believe he’s allowing you to be here for this, that he wants this with you, but everything he’s done and said would indicate he very much does.

“If you want to… to touch it, I think you should,” you urge gently. “If you’re comfortable with that.”

He huffs a short, tight breath out, then takes a second steadier one. He looks even more pained for a minute, then his expression calms. His eye sockets close, and the very tip of his middle phalanx grazes the cleft on the underside of his soul, curves into it with a delicately practiced motion. You bite your lip harder to keep from groaning; everything about what he’s doing seems unbearably private. The physical aspect of your arousal asserts itself, but it’s not demanding or crowding anything out. It’s suffused with tenderness and awe.

He holds his breath for a long time before letting it out, slow and shuddering. His sockets open slowly and he looks back up at you, points shining in darkness focusing in on your face. It’s like stargazing in reverse. His smile is so soft it could have come off as shy, but his essential backbone shines through, discerning, engaging, and incisive. _You’ve got me thinking in puns now,_ your inner voice says, and it warms the smile you give in return.

“maybe i was the one who had the wrong idea,” he says with enough rasp to pull a sharp sliver of heat right through you. He reaches over with his free hand and brushes your fingers almost idly. “you wanna touch my body, right?”

That’s the kind of question that could be taken as an invitation, but you know him better than that. He means that you desire it in general.

You chew your lips a moment. “Yeah. I do.”

“why?” Why do you, in particular, want to touch his body. In particular.

“Because I want to feel close to you, and I like you. Because-” you breathe shakily, trying to be as complete and honest as possible. In the presence of his soul, nothing else will do. “The way my body works...it tells me that’s what to do to make you feel good.”

“but you aren’t.” You aren’t touching him right now.

“I only want that if _you_ do,” you finish.

“hmm,” he breathes, still gazing into his soul. You feel him play with your fingers a little more, then hold them.

“may i?”

“Yeah,” you reply, although you’re not totally sure what’s going happen. This is unfamiliar territory, but you suspect both of you are curious enough, _want_ this enough to find out where it leads. All he does is take your hand, being careful not to bring it too near his soul, and places it gently on his own chest.

“will you do what you did before?” he asks softly, although his eyes don’t leave his soul. You look at your hand. You can feel him, the cotton soft to the touch, the unyielding bones underneath. You think about the way he’d shuddered and sighed under your fingers, the haunting way he’d looked at you afterward. He’d told you it felt good, just ‘different’. You want him to feel that way again, and it seems like he wants that, too.

You’re not laying the same way as before so you can’t exactly mimic it, but you spread your fingers and move your hand up his sternum just a little, fingertips brushing over the texture of ribs on the right side. The lump of what you think is his second rib ends up under your index finger, and you draw the tip of it across the cotton-clad bump, circle it lightly. You look back at his face, bathed iridescent in the light of his most essential self. He doesn’t make a sound, but you can see his eye lights changing texture wildly in the timeless darkness of his sockets.

He’s exquisite.

Sans takes your hand off his chest a little suddenly, but instead of letting go he holds it to the side, while his other gently pushes his soul back where it goes. When he looks up at you, it’s with the expression of soft shock you remember from another time. A good time. You don’t know what it means, necessarily, but it doesn’t seem to be a bad thing. He pulls your hand back and around his body, then keeps going until he’s curled up facing you, face buried in your chest. Only then does he exhale raggedly, trembling a little as he pulls you close.

“Are you okay?” you ask quietly, and feel a small burst of alarm when he keeps shaking. You reflexively put your hand on the back of his skull, intending to comfort, when you realize he’s laughing. Weakly, but not hysterical. Just surprised.

“heh... heh… yeah, i’m okay. oh, _man..._ ” It’s a strangled mumble against you. You’re really glad he’s doing the voice thing, because otherwise you seriously would have no idea. Even with that, his reaction is still mildly concerning to you. You realize your hand is still cupping his skull. “Is this okay?” you ask hesitantly, the smallest possible press of your fingertips against bone to indicate. He shudders a final time, then his body relaxes.

“yeah,” he sighs.

You’re burning with curiosity and still a bit of concern, but he obviously...needs a minute. There’s enough room for you to lay your upper body down so you do, finally taking your weight off your elbow and shoulder. It’s a little stiff, but even as the endorphins of whatever just happened wear off, it’s not too painful. It helps that having him this close, you can feel the oddly resonant magic in his body soothing you all over. Sans just breathes steadily, although after a few more minutes it starts to deepen.

“Sans, I can understand and empathize with you being worn out, but if you fall asleep right this second I have to admit it’s gonna make me sort of peevish,” you say into the silent dimness. He finally pulls back to look up at your face. He looks a little dazed, and there’s actually something wet at the corner of his left socket.

“Oh, geez, sorry” you whisper in chagrin. You reach out to touch it, wipe it away. It...tingles. “What did I do?”

He huffs softly. “nothin’ bad,” he rumbles quietly. “more like...you gave me a lot to think about. didn’t realize how much intentions, uh. matter. i should have, though. s’hard to explain.” He smiles up at you. “even for me, i guess.”

You get that he’s playing it off, but…

“This isn’t going to be a thing that happened but we never talk about it and just pretend it didn’t, is it?” you ask sadly. His grin flattens in dismay, then he meets your eyes with an intensity you don’t usually see from him. He pulls his arm from around you, but only to reach up and touch your face gently.

“s’not like that at all,” he says, drawing his hard, smooth fingertips along your cheek. “that was a very...profound experience.” His face goes soft as his thumb brushes your chin. “thank you.”

“i just need some time to process, uh, and i...” An extremely complicated emotion crosses his face, and he glances down. “need some time,” he repeats, barely a whisper. “to think.”

“so it turns out I really need that nap we talked about,” he adds sheepishly, but he sounds a little more like himself.

His eyes come back up, and a hint of playfulness returns before his expression turns exaggeratedly piteous. “you kinda wrecked me, bud. now i gotta think about how to return the favor sometime,” he says suggestively, then winks.

You blush. “Oh,” you reply softly. “Oh.” You clear your throat. “Well, at this point I think it’s late enough that it’s just regular sleeping. So, um. You wanna sleep over?”

He’s already snuggling back into you, and you adjust yourself to get a little more comfortable. “nothin’ i’d like better,” he sighs, already trailing off. You want to feel peevish anyways, since he hadn’t actually explained anything, but then you consider an entirely different possibility. Maybe Sans really, truly _doesn’t know_ what that was all about either. After all, neither of you had done anything precisely like that before, and… huh. Wow.

Your chest floods with warmth, and you’re a little surprised to discover you don’t feel pent up, upset, or any residual tension now that it’s clear he’d enjoyed himself. Apparently much more than he expected to, which at this point you feel okay enough about to smile at. And you also remember that this close, while he’s sleeping (yep...definitely already asleep), the aura of magic around him is both increased and...soporific. Huh. You’re already drifting off yourself, and that’s fine with you.

It feels good.

 

 


	13. The Boy With The Thorn In His Side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [The Smiths - The Boy With The Thorn In His Side](https://youtu.be/qdOHPjMzY8s)

You spend almost 30 seconds trying to convince yourself you’re just _imagining_ the sound and smell of coffee being brewed coming from your kitchen when you wake up in bed alone the next morning. Then you rub your eyes and chide yourself for letting your own trust issues do him such an insult, even in thought. Not only that...you smell something a little burnt, like maybe he turned your long-dormant oven on for some reason. You sniff again. Yep. It’s the unmistakable fragrance of a skeletal sadsack (whom you’ve been avoiding even referring to as your best friend, despite the fact that he is and _has been_ for months), incompetently cooking you some kind of shitty, wonderful breakfast.

You don’t get up yet. You rub your chest, but you know full well you don’t need to go soul searching to be honest with yourself about this. You know how he feels. You’ve just been walking around pretending like he didn’t make himself sick over you at least once, because instead of going home for healing when he was overworked (if what Frisk had told you was true, and you see no reason it wouldn’t be) two days before ARTBALL, he wanted to spend six aimless hours on your couch making ‘heh heh some _like it hot_ WINK’ “jokes” at you instead. He meant _you’re_ the hot one, and he’s been telling you that for a long time now.

His jokes are funny, but it doesn’t stop them from ringing true. They leave room for interpretation because he’s not a pushy person. They _create_ room for whatever kind of relationship _you’re_ willing to have, and your eyes prickle a little as you consider you can’t ever imagine him ever losing patience with your uncertainty. Add the almost constant cuddling, which had finally led to something a little more than that, and it’s not even that surprising. Well, it _had_ been surprising in many ways, but not the fact that it had happened.

It’s been like this between you since you both spent almost a week in your bed mourning your own deaths together.

Eh, bullshit. It’s been like this since _Grillby’s_.

It’s just that neither of you had had any clue what to do about it, or if there even had been anything _to_ do about it. Despite that, the more time you spend together, the more time you _want_ to spend together. You know he feels the same way about it, and so that’s what you’ve been doing. Getting to know each other. And no, even at this point you don’t talk to each other about everything. Like Frisk wanting your consultation on the future of humanity for some ungodly reason, and the fact that he’s obviously involved with something important enough that he works until he’s sick on it. Probably either the Core, or some kind of transportation thing. Considering his skillset. Again, you’re not a fucking tree stump. You just leave space for him to avoid your increasing closeness conflicting with whatever his few responsibilities and obligations actually _are_.

On your end, there’s also the issue that you still lose or gain a day here and there, and no, you still don’t know if you want to broach that topic with him yet. But the fact is that he finds a reason to see you most of them, regardless. You find a reason to talk to him all of them. Time spent with him always seems the most vibrant; that time has dilated into its own little universe for you.

You know he’s had some sort of unspecified and crappy experiences with humans in the past, but hey. Who hasn’t. That’s why _you’re_ still fucking laying here instead of going to give him a...well, not a kiss maybe, but one of those face-touching things and thanking him for his terrible cooking skills and really awesome...whatever that stuff last night had been. But you can’t sit here and convince yourself that his dislike of human sex acts and lack of human body parts make any difference in the end when it comes to how you both feel. Everyone’s different; you don’t actually think of him as _lacking_ anything, and you hope he feels the same about you. All it does is create more possibilities. And even that dislike or whatever is perhaps something he is reevaluating, or at least there’s the heavy implication. He’d said you’d given him a lot to think about last night, and that’s not something he’d say lightly.

Because you know him. Now you’re getting to know him a little more. And it’s really, really good. It _feels_ good, and it makes you happy. You smile in the tepid morning light coming in through your open curtains that neither of you had bothered to get up and close last night. And your lamp’s still on, too. Now you’re grinning. First impressions had definitely been correct; he’s still a trashy little skeleton and the walking manifestation of a messy bedroom, and you fucking _love_ it. You…

Okay, time to get up and brush your teeth! That breakfast is starting to smell closer to cooked, and if the coffee sits too long it gets nasty. Any more thinking alone-style will just have to wait. For...later. And that’s okay.

You lean against the wall as you descend the stairs, feeling a little more awake but craving the sweet promise of caffeine. There’s a pretty big mess on your counter, what looks like...strips of dough? Eggshells, an empty bag, spilled stuff. Whatever activity has caused the mess has reached a lull since Sans is motionless, his wide stance slumpy and broad-hipped, armbones leaned against your sink while he stares out the window above it.

He’s got his socks and slippers back on, and his hoodie’s fallen off the back of the chair where he presumably tried to ‘hang’ it (you’d think he’d have figured out it doesn’t work by now) and makes a dark blue puddle on your linoleum, so he must have popped out for ingredients. It makes your chest twinge a little when you look down and notice you’re wearing almost the exact same clothes, even though it’s not the first time you’ve noticed you and he share the same taste in loungewear. Most of your shirts have a design on the front, but otherwise. You don’t know why it feels _cuter_ now. Oh, well. Just admit it. You’re soft.

“What’s cooking?” you ask as you cross the dining area of the kitchen.

He turns to look over his shoulder at you, and a big, sincere smile steals across his face.

“i’m not exactly sure,” he replies gamely. Oh, there go his fingers. ‘e-g-g.’ He’s not _egg_ -xactly sure. “i couldn’t find the, uh. pastry things. so we’ll see if pizza dough works.”

You have to lean down a little further but you copy his pose and look out the window with him.

“You’re making an egg pizza?”

He chuckles a little wryly and rubs under his eye with a bony fingertip. “nah. s’like this quiche thing papyrus makes sometimes. thought it’d be special or something. i dunno.”

You just keep looking out the window, face getting hotter.

“yeah. i’m gonna talk about it. just figured i’d give you a chance to wake up.”

“It is,” you manage at last.

He looks at you questioningly.

“Special,” you add, then walk around him to the coffee maker. It’s not fancy like at his house with the french press but it gets the job done. “Thank you.”

You take your cup and sit at the table, and just watch him look out the window for a little bit, since you’re still kind of thinking, too. After the coffee’s half gone you feel awake enough to say something.

“You’re not the only one with issues.”

His head turns a little sharply at you, but he comes over easily enough and pulls out a chair, slumps down. Picks up his hoodie puddle and sticks it up on the chair back again where it promptly slides off.

“I just meant that it’s not something you necessarily...owe it to me to talk about? In detail? I just want you to know you’re not the only one who had a bunch of terrible sex with humans and now you need...I don’t know. You don’t have to lay out a bunch of bad memories just to get some basic consideration from me.”

The oven beeps, and he stands up and pulls the door open. You yelp when he grabs whatever’s in there with his bare hands, startling him almost enough to make him drop it, but in the end it makes it to the stovetop safely and you both laugh a little in relief.

“not flammable at this temperature,” he chuckles automatically, then darts his eyes at you furtively.

You roll your eyes and smile. “And I don’t care if you make jokes about the good memories, either.” He just shrugs, but looks slightly relieved. Weirdo.

You come over to take a look, and it’s actually not entirely unappealing. Just egg and green stuff, probably spinach if what you remember about quiches is correct. You glance at one of the empty bags and confirm it. You cut a piece and find a plate to put it on, then glance over at Sans.

“Am I supposed to just guinea pig out by myself?” The higher, surprised chuckle’s your reward for that one, and it fills you with the same warm glow. He still doesn’t doesn’t take a piece, and it makes you worry a little. Well. Maybe his jaw’s just tired, you think as you both come back and sit down. The slice of quiche...pizza is fine, it smells good, and you can’t think of any reason why your stomach’s a mite too heavy right now. Well. Actually, maybe you do.

You look into your plate like it’s a final exam.

“I don’t know why, but I just...I thought you’d take off? Even though I obviously didn’t want you to, and I didn’t have a reason to think you would. I don’t know. That’s what I mean by issues. And I don’t want to just fart around acting like whatever we did wasn’t a big deal and we’re just being bros or whatever because like. It’s a big deal to me.”

He rasps his fingers over the back of his skull. “wish i didn’t have an idea why you feel that way, but i do. s’why i gotta say this next part. an’ because i don’t want you getting the wrong idea, like...”

He looks thoughtful, but not especially uncomfortable.

“..like i didn’t have a good time with you. i did,” he emphasizes with a smile, then it fades. “and that’s, uh, the problem? not for _this_ , not for...” He gestures silently: ‘ _us_.’

Your eyes widen, but he’s continuing.

“just for me. making problems for myself, like i always do.”

He sighs, shakes his head a little.

“cause it’s like, other times when i didn’t have a good time.” he glances up, winces. “never did anything i didn’t wanna do, ok?” He looks a little distant and his hands move absently, “i’m perfectly capable of engineering my own misery.” It makes your heart ache terribly.

He sighs. “maybe you think, humans don’t have magic, they can’t do a lot of stuff. maybe they just do what they _can_ , cause they’re lonely. and you get curious, right? maybe you meet someone you like okay. sure, you get hints that maybe they just wanna prove something to themselves with you, or they just like the _idea_ of it. lotta people want an adventure. who knows.

“you try it out, but it’s not much of anything. you keep at it, don’t know why. maybe you meet someone else seems okay, but still not much. a little... uncomfortable, in some instances? or otherwise, _way_ too much like work.” He grins a little weakly. “Not my speed, for real,” he gestures to himself, and you can’t help but smile.

“but s’one thing to have a theory why it was like that, another to have someone prove it to you...like _that_. the difference when you’re in it for yourself, or...not.” His hands move absently again, while he seems lost in whatever revelation he’s been having since last night. “ways you can’t ignore, ways that show you something good about yourself instead.”

Your mouth drops open.

“ _You_ wrote that paper.”

Eye lights flicker dimly at you in bafflement. “huh?”

“The rebuttal,” you frown intently, trying to remember the title. You don’t. “The one about humans having a reputation as selfish lovers. I read it _years_ ago; a rebuttal to that overwrought and mildly creepy heart symbolism paper by Duncan or whoever. About monsters and humans getting it on. The rebuttal was anonymous but claimed to be by a monster. It had a conclusion with that kind of phrase, but the opposite. ‘ways that show you something you don’t like about yourself.’ Did _you_ write that?”

His teeth part slightly, and he’s looking at you with wide sockets...then he looks at his hands in shock, like he forgot what they are and don’t know how they got there. To your surprise, he switches entirely to sign rather than speaking to you verbally. He hasn’t signed at you conversationally (other than puns) in a long time, and you had no clue he was fluent. It changes the way you process what he says by a significant amount.

“Why are you so easy to talk to?” He gestures, beaming. “I say that like I don’t already know. I’ll say all sorts of things that can get me in trouble, but I think you know I don’t care about that as much as I should. I don’t care about a lot of things I probably should. But it turns out, I care about _you_. Which is why I couldn’t just lay there like that, thinking about my own experiences instead of having one with you.”

He huffs softly, sockets almost crinkling as he continues.

“Thinking about how it was possible, because we wanted the same thing so much it _became_ possible. Not just what you intended, but what I actually _wanted_. What I _hoped_ for. And I had to deal with being wrong about myself, and be honest about what I want. That’s not always comfortable. All that...baggage. It’s not what I wanted to bring to you.”

He sighs, but his eyes are fond.

“So I slept on it, because if I think too hard I always make things complicated. When I sleep, I think _soft_.”

He shakes his head, but not sadly. A little wryly, maybe, but then his eyes sparkle with amusement.

“I’m _not_ actually good at explaining things. Everyone complains about it. You just understand me, and you don’t even think of it that way. We’re not necessarily alike, we’re just compatible. And if you want to know how much that means to me, you could always try noticing _this isn’t ASL_.”

He winks like a true bastard.

Your eyes are pretty wide, and you try and steady your breathing.

“You’re a son of a bitch, you know that?” you comment, but it’s not actually scary and you don’t particularly mean it.

“I might be,” he signs, laughing. “Speaking of which, I think this is actually my native language,” he continues the same way. “I’ll probably even tell you why I don’t even know _that_ for sure sometime, speaking of getting in trouble, but-” a strange crackling sounds fill your ears, tones you don’t recognize “-this is what it sounds like spoken aloud.” You can follow his hands just fine, but not whatever he’s speaking verbally. That might be beyond the scope of even his abilities. "My brother knows it too,” he adds, signing along.

“He says it’s not fair people think he talks too much, when I talk _twice_ as much as he does. Because, he _says_ -” and he shakes with laughter til his sockets close, glowing with pride, “-he says, ‘Well, _my_ brother talks so much, he _talks while he’s talking_!’” He’s chuckling so hard that moisture starts to form at the corner of one scrunched socket, then it opens to peep at you almost hysterically.

“You should see people’s _faces_! No one’s ever gotten that joke in...I don’t know how long. Never. Because _that_ joke’s just for me, to make _me_ laugh. Like a gift. You understand how he is? I think so. But now I guess you’re in on the joke, too.” His face softens, the points in his sockets spreading and dimming when he meets your eyes.

“Get it? Even when I didn’t _mean_ to speak to you from my soul, I did it anyway. I don’t even have to try; it’s what my soul wants. _You_ didn’t even know this language existed five minutes ago, and you understand me anyway.”

“you thought i don’t wanna _talk_ about it?”

He’s switched back to English, with whatever the thing is that makes your soul understand.

“i don’t ever wanna talk about anything _else_ ,” he finishes, and then just laughs some more.

You join him a little dazedly. “You’re not going to play up being mysterious and aloof?”

“you kidding me? how have i ever been mysterious?”

You give him an exasperated look. “Sometimes I feel like everything about monsters in general is a secret.”

He shrugs, because of course he does. “that wasn't my idea.”

You press your lips together involuntarily, and he tries to suppress a snort.

“What?” you ask peevishly.

Now he’s giggling. “nah, s’just...you look like tori when you make that face.”

“Huh. I’ll have to take that as a compliment then.”

He looks like he doesn’t quite know what to do with that. Good. It’s more fair that way, because you are currently feeling very emotionally compromised for several reasons. You take a deep breath.

“I guess I want you to know that it was like that for me too? Really different, maybe not in the same ways. It’s not like it isn’t emotional, doing it the way _I’m_ used to, but it’s always sort of...loud? Like it drowns out everything else after a certain point, and you can’t always really think or be present that way. Even if you might like to. That has its own set of charms and vulnerabilities, but this was like everything at once. I don’t know how it’s both less urgent and more intense, but that’s what it was like. For me. I’ve never felt like that before, or done anything...like that.”

He looks cautiously fascinated, but he sees when a thought hits you.

“Oh my god, Sans,” you say, smirking. “Are we virgins?”

He just tilts his head, and his eye lights dim for a second.

“monsters don’t have a word for that,” he says thoughtfully. “or maybe...we don’t have a _concept_ for that? s’like having a word for someone who’s never gone bowling. any given day either ya do or ya don’t, doesn’t change who you _are_. ’s a weird idea to me.”

He’s being more serious than you expected, and that actually sounds like a better way to think of it, but you can’t help snickering. “Have you ever gone bowling?”

“literally? nope.” his sockets are flat at the bottom again, and he huffs a laugh.

“What _is_ what we did called?”

“hmm.” he rubs his maxilla thoughtfully. “i’d just say I showed you my soul. anyone’d know what it means.”

“But that’s not exactly what we did. Or, I mean... _all_ we did?”

He just looks at you, waiting.

“Is it sex?”

Now he looks very thoughtful, actually tilting his head a little. He’s quiet for longer than you expected.

“yeah,” he replies finally. “yeah, I think so. that’s not peer-reviewed, though, so don’t cite me on that,” he adds with another wink. “do you like being touched?” he adds, surprising you.

You blush. “Like, on my body? Yeah.” Then you sort of rub your chest self-consciously. “I’m not sure about the other thing? Not that I’m _not_ interested, or I’m-” you swallow reflexively.

He just shrugs. “some people don’t ever do that, and it’s not a big deal. just so you know. monsters don’t have the same, uh...expectations? ‘bout what’s gonna happen with anyone in particular.”

“It’s not that I’m not interested,” you repeat slowly in ASL, looking pointedly at the floor with your eyebrows raised.

“you wanna go back upstairs?” he asks.

You nod almost shyly.

“k.” He stands up and walks by, holds out his skeletal fingers and smiles at you. You take them.

***

“I think I’m a little _too_ excited now,” you admit, your entire body fluttering with anticipation as Sans traces your face with his nasal bone, softly humming once in a while.

“excited can be good,” he rumbles softly. He’s holding you, but not stroking anywhere, just resting a hand on your upper arm, then lifting it up to brush back a bit of your hair from your forehead. “you thought about what you want?” he asks, then gives your shoulder a light squeeze. Your heart gives a resounding thud at that, and you hear him exhale in amusement.

“felt that wiggle,” he comments, a little unnecessarily in your opinion.

“Hmm,” you sigh, trying to control your breathing a little more. “I think... I feel like I want to be more calm. More like before? I don’t know. Can’t recreate a perfect moment, I guess.” He’s still caressing your face with his. “It’s interesting, you can do a lot more talking when you’re not kissing all the time.”

“do you wanna kiss me?” he asks in a lower register.

“Ohhhh,” you sigh shakily. “You were serious about the revenge, weren’t you?”

He snickers a little. You exhale through your nose and your eyelids list a little; you pull him a little closer, tilt your face and press your lips to his cheekbone. You don’t open your mouth or anything, but you do catch his fragrance when you inhale, and you giggle.

“You smell like bones,” you half-whisper. Apparently the giggles are contagious. “you smell like human,” he chuckles with bizarre confidence. Well, tit for tat.

“Is that okay? The kiss, I mean. I smell fine.”

“yeah, ’s nice,” he replies. “can’t really return the favor or anything, though.”

You continue to press against him in a relatively restrained way, but you don’t put your hands on him even now. Despite that, just his proximity, penetrating voice, and heavy breathing is sending you up the wall. What you’re experiencing is a lot more physical and immediate than you really want it to be right now. It’s not bad, it’s just that you don’t want to feel frustrated.

“This is harder than it should be,” you comment wryly, then meet his eyes when you realize what you just said. You both giggle a little at the various entendres, but touch foreheads and sigh before it goes off the rails.

“jus’ depends on what you wanna do,” he says lightly. “we got nothin’ but possibilities.”

He lifts his head a little to look at you better. “can’t really just throw me on the floor and fuck me, though. or vice versa. but otherwise.”

You blink up at him, then grin.

“Sans, did you just say the fuck word?”

His eyes flicker.

“yeah?”

“I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you using tier 2 curse words,” you laugh helplessly.

He grins a little sheepishly. “eh. got used to tori’s swear jar, i guess,” he chuckles. “the kid n’ all.”

Huh. Now that’s interesting.

He frowns down at you a moment, but still seems amused.

“you start askin’ about _that_ , i think you’re gonna have the opposite problem to the one you got pretty quick.”

Now you _really_ have to laugh. “I won’t ask, but I think you’d be surprised,” you reply cryptically. He tucks his face into your neck, and you gasp as his simultaneously smooth and textured face rubs at you there, skeletal fingers stroking down your arm.

He leans back up a little, sockets alight with the kind of calm, steady desire you want to be feeling right now, instead of being this shaking, panting mess. He’s so _p_ _eaceful_ about everything, ready to lay with you here for however long you want, or he wants. You wish you could do something to catch that vibe, and smile up at him a little sadly.

He makes a quiet noise. “Hm.”

He leans up until he’s half-sitting, reaches up and back until he grabs the collar of his t-shirt. You gasp as he pulls it forward, then off over his head.

Holy shit. He’s beautiful.

A little bit of late morning light is peeking in through the curtains, leaving him slightly backlit. His bones are luminously white, clean in a way only bones that have never been clothed in flesh and blood could be. He looks smaller without clothes on, but not particularly delicate. His ribcage is wide and his shoulders are narrow, and this close, it’s easy to see how his bones both are and aren’t separate. Between the bones, he’s...indescribable. Space and light alike; _time_ for all you know, bend inside his ribcage. It’s darker in there than should be possible. Even the light from the window can’t shine through his strikingly unreal existence, despite the fact that you can still see that light; despite the fact that you can see easily into the open space where that light fails to penetrate.

You can see _inside_ him.

It’s like a painting of impossible objects, showing you illusions that bend your eye into submission, until you have no choice but to just accept that it _is_ happening and enjoy the ride. You’re not sure if you were expecting to somehow be able to see his soul floating there in his chest, but of course it’s not. However, it doesn’t give the impression of being empty, despite his spine being faintly visible behind the ribs, more so past his midriff, below which the band of his shorts wraps his broad pelvis. His soul’s distributed throughout somehow, and his magic; it’s what holds him _together_. That’s why he’s not a pile of lifeless bones lying on your duvet, after all, but rather is this vibrant, funny, amazing person who’s sharing something very spectacular with you right now. He’s sharing himself.

He’s a work of art.

Then of course, you see his face. Teeth parted the slight amount they’re able, the iridescent cast to his features lending an urgency to his expression you don’t usually see there. The lights in his eyes are tiny points, and as you meet them, you hear the smallest rustle of hardness kissing itself somewhere deep in his body.

“no one ever looked at me like that before,” he says, sounding a little strained.

“Never seen anyone like you before,” you whisper in reply.

“hmm.” his expression softens a little but doesn’t lose its intensity.

You raise your arm over your head where you’re lying on your back, and rest the other across your middle. You’d honestly be happy to just stare at him for another hour or so. He looks down at you, still leaning on one hip. He props up one of his arms on his knee with a patient expression.

“don’t go pokin’ around just anywhere, ‘k?” His index distal phalanx lightly indicates the inch or so between his ulna and radius on the opposite arm. “those spaces? aren’t. i can feel it. got it?”

You nod, sign “yes.”

Then his fingertip indicates his ribcage, taps lightly at the second rib. It’s the spot you touched last night.

“even more, here,” he continues in a lower register.

He delicately pushes the distal tip in between the two ribs, then a little further to the second joint. He meets your eyes for a long moment while you try to catch your breath.

“don’t know how i feel about that yet,” he adds neutrally.

You gesture affirmatively. You understand. You understand a little more than maybe he intended, because you’re getting the strong impression that even other monster’s bodies don’t work like this. Apparently whatever holds his bones together is sensitive to disruptions in that...force? You don’t know, but it makes a lot of sense based on his behavior...and his face as he looks at you while penetrating himself that way. You hear him exhale slowly as he removes the finger between his ribs, looking a little amused. Slowly, he reaches out and takes your hand, looking at your face, then at himself. He pulls your hand towards him and lays it flat against his ribcage.

He’s so smooth there. You can feel how he’s just short of slick as he pulls your warm skin slowly across his body.

“hmmm,” he sighs again, intent and thoughtful. His sockets list a little as the points in them dim, expanding.

It’s wonderful to feel him like this. Maybe he should know how wonderful, and you find you really want to _show_ him. That feeling focuses, intensifies, and now you think you know what it is. You pull your hand away from his lovely bones, but only to take his in yours, then place it on your own cotton-and-flesh-clad chest. Your heart and something even deeper than that are thrumming in there, because apparently this time _he_ knew just what to do to get you where you wanted to be.

It’s nice when that sort of thing works out.

His breath catches, and his eyes change shape in a way you haven’t seen before as he lays back down next to you, pillowing his skull on the arm still raised over your head. You tilt your wrist up slightly, just enough to bring his face towards yours for a long, lingering caress. You press his hand against you, shudder out a long breath against his face.

“you thought about what you want?” he asks again as he spreads his fingers, this time his voice sounds a lot less calm than before.

“Mmm,” you say shakily, because you’re shaking.

“you gotta say it,” he whispers against you. “m’not gonna just start doing stuff. and _only_ if you want to, okay?”

You press your face against him harder, and kiss his maxilla a little breathlessly.

“Do you want to see me?” you ask instead.

Was that a tiny squeak? Wow. His fingers don’t move, though.

“i’m… yeah. a lot.”

“Please bring my soul out,” you sigh, pressing your face to his while still tilting it so you can both watch.

How could you not?

It’s you.

Now his hand moves under yours, rubbing across your chest a little and delicately pressing at...something. Oh. It’s _drawing_ at you somehow; something in him is calling to something in you, and it’s answering on its own, feels like. His fingers steeple and you remove your hand, though it hovers nearby, waiting. You can’t stop yourself from making a soft, almost helpless noise as your soul’s light gathers and emerges from your body, something arguably separate from it but also its only reason for existing, and now you see it.

It’s _you_.

“ _holy shit_ ,” Sans sobs quietly. You feel his awed breath on your face, but you can’t look away from your self. It demands too much attention, and it feels too good.

It’s good, and you’re so glad he’s here to see it.

“me too,” he chokes out, rolls his forehead against your hair.

“can you _see_ that?” you whisper, half-entranced.

His breath hitches, and his hand goes to your belly as your own comes up underneath your self. You think he might actually be crying. It fills you with warmth, protectiveness. Almost unbearable intimacy, with something deeper that feels a little dangerous.

“y-yeah,” he stutters. “s’hard to explain. it’s so _strong_ ,” he adds in a whisper, inexplicably. You don’t know if he means how you feel, or how he feels, or something else entirely but you’re flooded with a diffuse but absolute desire that seems to be toward both him and yourself. You’ve never felt anything like it, and Sans huffs in surprise while you both watch it bloom. His hand moves under your shirt and up your belly like something blind and questing, yearning without seeking, and suddenly a much more familiar kind of desire spikes through you. You hear a tight gasp.

“what was _that_?” he chokes out, sounding dumbfounded.

“Uhhh,” but your throat’s not working because his hand is still stroking your under your shirt, creeping upward. You don’t think he’s entirely conscious that he’s doing it but it’s _definitely causing an increase in certain_ -

You move your arm quickly from under his head so you can still his fingers with yours.

“Let’s take a little break,” you squeak breathlessly, and yeah just about everything feels a little more high pitched than it usually does as you slowly push your soul

_back where it goes_

and then you’re shaking, and it’s intense and you really need to be held like _a lot_ , immediately as in right now. Luckily he’s right here, he hasn’t left your side once this whole time. Sans wraps bony arms around you, and this time the way you embrace is more casual, tighter. Nothing clumsy; nothing hurts and he’s not poking you. It’s just hard, and good, and safe. You feel safe. A little tingly, and you’re realizing those are the tears or whatever he makes, coming out of his eye socket onto your forehead.

“oh, uh. sorry,” he mutters as you both start to calm down a little, and he dabs at them without solving the tingling at all, really. “heh,” he tries but there’s no voice in it, just a short breath.

“what-” you both say the same word at the same time, and then you both laugh brokenly. You’re wiping a few tears yourself, you find, and some of whatever that is gets in your eye and _uhhhhh that’s weird_ for a second. You rub his shoulder blade carefully with the inside of your wrist, and it seems to soothe him a bit, too.

“you first,” he says quietly after another minute or two.

“What are the...tears you make?” you ask. “They tingle.”

He huffs a short breath. “s’magic. that’s...what i’m made of.”

“Is that what you sweat, too?”

A little more oomph behind this laugh. “yup.”

“Now you,” you say, smiling into the dark, secret space between your bodies. It’s impossible that his bones block the light as much as they do, and you like it.

“what, uh. what _was_ that?”

Oh geez. That’s a little harder to answer. You lean back a little so you can look at his face, but then you inexplicably find yourself blushing. You sigh, and answer anyways. Because you know what he means, and you’d seen it yourself.

“That’s how it makes me feel when you touch me. Like that.”

Well, he looks dumbfounded.

“do you...still feel that way?”

You look away for a second. “Y….yes?”

He’s still holding you, looking like he’s having a lot of very profound thoughts in quick succession. He’s stroking your arm gently, too, then he leans in and lightly traces under your eye with his nasal bone. The skin there is so delicate, the bone is a little pointy, and his movement is incredibly controlled. So gentle. It fills you with a rush of complicated feelings.

“hey, so,” he says, sounding calmer but still...something else, too. “was just wonderin’. can I touch you some more?”

“Hmmm,” you exhale slowly, eyes fluttering shut. “How do you mean?”

“i didn’t... know it felt like that,” he says after a surprisingly long time. “but i know what to do for it to happen. if that makes sense.”

Oh. Yeah, you do think you know what he means. Wow.

But also… you cover your face with your hands and bark an uneasy chuckle, a little embarrassed as something occurs to you extraordinarily belatedly.

“You have no idea what I’ve even got uh, going on. Downstairs. Do you? You never asked.”

Shit. Now you’re laughing, and it’s not even a little. It’s a lot. You peek out since he hasn’t said anything, and he just looks very honestly like he’s got no idea what you’re talking about. You laugh even harder, maybe because there’s actually a sharp thorn of discomfort at the root of your mirth. You acknowledge it internally, then try to tell it to shut the hell up.

“Fuck,” you squeak. “I’m ruining the mood.”

“any mood that can get ruined that way doesn’t sound like a good one to be in,” he replies, and for some reason, you really do believe him. You let it run its course.

“isn’t everyone’s different?” he adds after a minute.

“Oh, man,” you sigh fervently. “I can’t argue with that.”

“’s okay if that’s enough adventure for now.”

You rub your face, sigh, and put your arms back around him.

He’s not the only one with hangups, but you’ve got a king sized bed for a reason, and there’s room for both of you in it.

“Hmmmm...” you say, a long speculative breath. “I don’t know. I don’t feel….done? Do you?”

He looks at you thoughtfully. “this doesn’t really, uh, work like that.”

You blink. “How do you know when to stop?”

“uh, you just...do? how did you know when to stop on your own?”

“I’m actually pretty bad at that part,” you admit, frowning. “Maybe that’s why I’m always so hungry later.”

He looks like he’s trying really hard not to laugh, and you appreciate the effort.

“we can stop if we get hungry,” he allows, keeping his grin reasonable.

“Can I ask you something?”

His grin softens. “sure.”

“What’s it like to touch someone else’s soul?”

He huffs a little, looks down silently.

“I just...” You try to think of a way to phrase it. “I’m not, um. Like, when you asked me if I liked to be touched, I wasn’t sure what kind of touching you meant? How can I know that?”

He shakes his head, still looking down. “’m thinking.”

You do your own thinking about how good it feels to hold him, to be with him like this, while he does that. After a considerably long time, he finally says, “not sure if i can explain it, but...”

He reaches down and takes your hand, brings it up and presses your fingertips to his bare sternum.

“like this, for me? s’like a...a _presence_. You.”

He lets it go, breathing a little unsteadily, and brings his own fingers to settle under your collarbone.

“this, for me? like a… a window.”

Now he’s just fiddling with your hands, tracing them with his fingers, still a little out of breath. Just from explaining, apparently. Wow.

“Do you like either one better? A...preference?”

He meets your eyes. “you don’t gotta pick one,” he points out suggestively.

Oh. Well. And you suppose it’d be easy enough to do both at the same time, too. Wow.

“What did you mean by “strong”?” you whisper. “You said..” You trail off, blushing a little. Your faces are still only a few inches apart so he can probably feel the heat from your face; he seems very sensitive to warmth. Oh, well.

“heh. i was right about getting in trouble,” he chuckles, but he actually looks a little iridescent about it, too. Hmm. His eye lights still have that same almost-smolder in them.

“human souls are stronger than monster souls,” he says at last. “i didn’t think of it in this context before. turns out it’s pretty intense.”

Okay, well that’s unsettling, and it creates a lot more questions than it answers. But right now, there’s probably one question that matters the most.

“Is that going to be a problem? Can it...hurt you?”

“no,” he answers confidently.

This isn’t really the time to go researching, but that’s something you really don’t want to take a chance with. On the other hand, maybe there’s not that kind of risk involved in whatever this is? There’s a lot you don’t know. You press your lips together, still feeling that strangely diffuse desire, now mixed with concern.

Sans leans up and over you, brings his face closer to yours. Touches your foreheads together.

“never did tell ya what I like about _your_ eyes,” he says, then slides his knee over you until his femur is between your legs. He’s positioned over you, bony face pressed to your soft one so your eyes are facing right into each other. You get the that same sense of expanding space, of _timelessness_ , that’s starting to become familiar to you when you stare into his sockets like this. They never seem _too_ close, no matter how you press your face to his. The points in them are never too close for you to focus on, where human eyes would just become a formless blur. His other elbow comes down on the pillow beside your head.

“so much black space in the middle like that. they get bigger when I get closer, you know that?” He huffs out a soft breath against your parted lips.

“reminds me of when,” he falters a little. “when i saw the stars -the _real_ ones-for the first time. was like...the spaces between em? felt like i could fall right in. s’like part of me wanted to, and just keep going. but i can’t, right? i just _feel_ like it, and...”

You can feel the cradle of his pelvis pressing against you, and his slick, bare bones up top slide unimpeded over the cotton of your shirt. You groan a little as the texture of his ribcage flows across you, and his fingers push through your hair, stroke your hairline gently. “i _liked_ that feeling... how i like your eyes. How i like-” his breath catches, “-your soul. i can’t get hurt by em. not just from feeling that way, ‘cause they’re _my_ feelings. it’s like that.”

You raise your arms and circle him gently, press your palms flat to his ribs in the back and glide them across. He sighs, shifts down a little, and just lays down on top of you. He’s heavier than you thought, but not by much. Even though his bones are hard their weight distributes evenly. It feels good. You link your hands and just hold him there, reeling with that oddly diffuse pleasure, but after a few minutes his head pops up suddenly. He looks at you in consternation that turns slowly to chagrin.

“you can’t see how i feel,” he breathes in a strange voice.

“What do you mean?” You blink in surprise.

“i...last night. you couldn’t see it.” His sockets are dented with dismay. “i didn’t _forget_ , i just...no _wonder_ you aren’t sure what you want. i didn’t realize.” He almost looks...ashamed of himself?

“What’s wrong?”

“it’s...if you could _see_ it, you’d already know that i care about you. that i...” he touches his forehead to your chest, then looks back up at you. “you got no reason to believe me.” He looks profoundly saddened.

“But I do,” you say, frowning down at him. Is it possible that whatever he saw when he looked at your soul, it was that convincing? Or...affecting? From his reaction, it seemed like it. And you have to admit, even though you trust him a lot, and feel a lot of...things, you’d still been evasive and unsure when he’d offered to touch you before.

That small, hidden part of you that’s still afraid to be hurt and can’t bear to be rejected, especially after all this, had come to the forefront.

You look into his inhuman, compassionate eyes, a yearning ache settling into your chest. You wished yours worked the same way, so you could see…

Suddenly, you remember something he said about a window.

“Would I be able to see if I touched it?”

He pulls in a sharp breath, eye lights shrinking. His sockets change shape again, and he breathes out raggedly.

“yeah, you’d… you’d _know_. yeah.”

“Is that something you’d like?” you ask a little breathlessly.

He looks dumbfounded, for some reason. “yeah,” he gasps.

Your bring your hand up to cup his skull gently, look into his eyes. Your thumb strokes his zygomatic process, and he sighs, the points in his sockets dimming as they expand.

“Will you let me touch your soul?”

Apparently that’s a little much, because he hides his face in your chest, presses it into you. His hand comes and touches the back of your hand, holding it to his skull as he shudders.

“Hey,” you say quietly. “It’s okay to say no. It’s okay to just _not say yes_. I like how we are now, too. A lot.”

You hear him muffling weak laughter against you; you feel it. Then he turns his face to the side, still encouraging you to touch him, and speaks in his quietest, most resonant voice.

“i’m not afraid. i don’t even know how ta tell you how much i want that, cause...i never had to _tell_ anyone before. and even that’s more exciting than anything. but you need to know it’s gonna be intense. i’ll feel you. and,” his breath hitches.

“i’ll _feel_ you,” he whispers, looking up into your eyes a little desperately. “you’ll _know_ me. you gonna be okay with that?”

He’s obviously explained it the best he can. All that’s really left to decide if you want it or not. When you think about how you felt last night looking at his soul, watching him touch it... it sends a pang of desire through you that is deeper and broader than anything you’ve experienced. He makes you feel safe, and happy. You’re not afraid, either.

“Whatever this is,” you say slowly, “I want to have it with you.”

He exhales slowly against you, rolls off you but only to cuddle up to your side.

“You have to show me what to do, okay?” you murmur, turning to touch his face with yours some more. You lean up to touch your lips to his orbital, his maxilla; press in to feel the arch of his ribs against your midriff. His arm comes up around you, pulls you down to lay with him as his fingers explore his bare sternum. He rubs his face into your neck from underneath as his hand draws back, and you feel a rush of joy and pleasure as his soul emerges and bathes you in its otherworldly light.

Two middle distal phalanges touch it right away. He makes a soft, vulnerable noise into your neck, then strokes the surface lightly. It’s even more exciting than last time, and you can hardly believe that but here you are.

“i want this so much,” he whispers in awe, and this time you can’t contain the soft, wordless moan you give in response. “i want you to _know_ how much,” he elaborates insistently.

You gasp when his hand leaves his essential self unprotected, floating and exposed, even for the brief moment it takes for him to take your hand. His hand cups yours and brings it toward him, his fingers come up underneath yours like piano keys. You copy their position and movement. He hesitates for a long moment before his fingertips curve yours in toward his soul, then more, and then-

A shockingly loud growl seems shoved out of him, and the heel of his bare, bony foot scrapes reflexively across the sheets because your presence inside him is so sudden, so impossible to ignore. You’d have withdrawn already from his reaction if it wasn’t for the fact that you suddenly know _he doesn’t want you to_. The bone fingers that still hold yours pressed into his soul are there because he wants you exactly like this, precisely where you are. He didn’t know it would be this much, never could have guessed it would be _like this_ , and he wants it so very badly.

Because souls can touch in ways that hands can’t. After all, anything made of matter will always have spaces between even the smallest particles, and all touch _is_ just particles reacting to each other. But souls don’t work that way. They don’t so much _react_ as _become_. And even though yours is diffuse through your body, existing in only one place, his is condensed and exposed, existing in two places at once in order to offer itself to you. You’re touching everything he is with part of you, but somehow without being _part_ , or particles. An infinite piece touching and merging with his whole self, and you’re so very strong. It’s _so much_ , but you know you really _can’t_ hurt him this way.

He fills with warmth and happiness as you experience what he’d been unable to explain. Touching like this redefines the concept entirely. Your presence fills him utterly, and you make him feel _so good_. It is like a window, or a frame containing a painting of everything you make him feel. The tingle of his magic overflowing soaks your neck as he pants against you fervently. It’s so important; he wants you to _know_.

He likes the way you always say “Oh” twice. Right before and right after you figure something out.

He likes how you always manage to surprise him, even on the dull, monotonous days when he feels like he’s heard every combination of every possible thing anyone could say to him. How you find a way to say something by accident that might seem like the wrong thing to anyone else, but is exactly the right thing to say to him, in particular. The way you are makes him think more about what he does, and why.

He likes the way you treat other people, how you interact with them. Not with indiscriminate evenness, but with fairness and respect towards individuals. People find your attention validating _because_ you’re discerning, he’s seen it. He’s felt it when you turn it towards him. He admires you for expecting the best from others and yourself, for your loyalty to people who care about you.

He thinks you’re brave. You astound him with your willingness to be vulnerable and emotionally honest at the most unexpected moments. Always at the times when it really matters. It makes him want to share himself in ways he’s not used to.

When he notices you and he are alike in some ways, it makes him like himself more. Because the ways you’re alike are the things he _does_ like about himself, not the things he wishes he could get rid of. Conflicting and even ugly things; harm done to himself and others. Things he wishes he could regret, but doesn’t. He cares what you think of him.

He’s astounded by how happiness finds a way to always reverberate and increase between the two of you, while any pain shared is lessened. He loves it when you laugh. He’s always known how big a difference that can make for someone, just a joke, just someone taking that single, simple moment to look at you and say, ‘I see you. You exist to me, and I want to make you happy if I can.’ But you’re someone who does that for him. When you look at him, he feels like he’s seen. Not like he’s scenery.

You make him _laugh_.

He wants to return the favor. He wants to make you feel good in every way you’ll let him; good time spent together, talking, eating, goofing off, sleeping, being touched like this, touching you like this. Touching you the ways humans like, and looking at your face when he does because he wants to know what it feels like, especially if it feels _like that_. Like when you touched his chest, his bones. His _body_.

He didn’t know it could feel _like that_.

The idea that _he_ could make you feel that way burns in him like a live coal, and he sobs against your neck helplessly. His fingers tense, moving inward until he makes a softer noise, panting short breaths against you as his own phalanges make contact with his soul right alongside yours. Entwining. Pushing, just a little.

Being with you like this makes him want things he doesn’t have names for, and feel things that would be frightening if he didn’t trust you so much, if you didn’t make him so happy. You made him have to rethink _everything_ , and to his shock he _wants to_ , when the idea of starting over has filled him with nameless dread for longer than he can remember. Such a horribly, timelessly long time. The fact that he can want anything this much makes him feel so alive; being around you makes him feel a little more present in his own life.

It gives him a strange sort of hope.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? You’ve been so careful with him from the moment you met, noticed what he does and doesn’t like. Your touch is generous, not invasive; your fingers hum with thoughtfulness and respect, so much he can almost taste it. You hold everything he is so securely now, without bruising. His skeletal arm tightens around you, and his body starts to curl in toward yours, femur sliding over your leg as you turn to the side and face him. His phalanges spread between your fingers, sink in further where you both blur and blend into his essential self.

When he says he wants to touch you, he means he wants the chance to show you he can be careful and generous too, that he can make you feel as good as you make him feel.

You’re touching him now in a way he already knows he likes and is comfortable with, and he wants to do the same for you.

Not too much adventure. Just feeling safe and cared for, even when you’re vulnerable.

The closer your bodies get as they fold towards each other, the more you notice an increasing pressure, the simultaneous tingle and magnetic resonance of magic centered where your fingers are touching his bones, touching his soul. In the moment just before the space between you disappears, you feel a rush as whatever it is intensifies, then dissipates. The noise he makes this time is so unexpectedly, emphatically soft, so peaceful and satisfied, it brings tears to your eyes. Your fingers touch his bare sternum as his soul floods back into the rest of itself, carrying the emotions, impressions, and sensations of your touch with it to become part of him again.

Your limbs tangle around each other, pressing as close as you can get.

“ _Holy shit_ ,” you whisper fervently after several long minutes pass in quiet mutual contemplation and revelation.

“that’s what _i_ said,” he hiccups with a weak laugh, squeezes you tighter.

“Do you still feel that way?” you ask a little breathlessly.

“yeah,” he replies earnestly, his fingers trailing just barely under the hem of your shirt.

“Then please touch me,” you request with a sigh.

You’re already holding each other so that the curve of your belly presses slightly into the space between his ribcage and pelvis, and for a moment he clutches you even closer, shuddering. He pushes forward as you roll on to your back, leans up on one elbow to look down at you with smoldering points in his half-mast sockets. He bends his neck to caress your face with his, and you press a hot kiss against tepid bone.

Rather than trying to or asking you to take your clothes off, he runs his hand underneath your shirt like he has to account for every bit of skin you have. The magical charge his bones give off isn’t like heat, but it intensifies his touch along with the sensations of pressure, pleasure, barely-there friction. He pushes down past the waistband of your shorts, but only strokes the front of your thighs at first, seeming to enjoy the heat you give off as much as you relish what he has to offer. When he spreads his fingers on the inside of your leg, brushes it gently with fingertips smooth as glass, you breathe heavily in anticipation. The impossibly mobile hardness of his hand is utterly alien and incredibly arousing; the way he touches you is both skillful and attentive.

When he reaches the wet, quivering cleft between your thighs with delicate distal phalanges, he draws in a sharp breath.

“you’re ready this soon?” he pants wonderingly. “you liked it that much?”

You reach up and wrap your arms around his shoulders, pull him close enough to kiss his collarbone, making him shiver. “I like _you_ that much,” you admit throatily. “I’ve been like this since we laid down.” You press your forehead against his clavicle, sigh, and try to relax a little.

“oh my god,” he whispers, astounded. Then the flat of his textured palm rubs slowly across the slick mess you’ve made, and you exhale shakily. Without disturbing the way you’re holding him, he kneels up slightly and plants a bony patella between your legs, holding himself up on the opposite elbow. You moan as he rubs you again, and his change of position is exciting. You feel his shoulder moving inside the circle of your arms. He pulls back to tease you delicately with fingertips, then presses gently with the heel of his hand. It’s good that he’s gentle, because his touch is much more intense than you expected, between the texture of all those tiny bones working in unison and the drawing, magnetic feeling his magic creates when he touches you, even there. Especially there. A soft moan escapes and surprises you.

“hey,” he says quietly from above you. “would it be okay if I could see you?”

It confuses you for a second, since he’s made no attempt to remove your clothes in the first place. You let your head fall back on the pillow and look up at him, and his whole face softens as his eye lights fuzz out, managing to focus in on your face. “yeah,” he sighs, his sockets taking on an almost pained shape. “like that.”

Oh. He wants to watch your face. Which shouldn’t surprise you, considering you’d certainly known that from touching his soul a very short time ago. At the same time, it’s not something you’re used to doing, and has made you uncomfortable in the past. But you realize as you gaze up at him that his face still doesn’t stress you out, and him looking isn’t bothering you at all. Watching your face has always seemed to give him a lot of information, so you can understand why he’d _want_ to right...now. Oh. _Oh._

The look on his face grows more intent, the shape of his sockets narrowing as his fingers, thumb, and palm focus and pull pleasure out of you; it reminds you of the way he’d touched your chest when he brought your soul out. You imagine what it would have been like if he had touched it then, what it would mean to feel the way he did when you were suddenly... _present_. You wonder if you could even _handle_ that, but just thinking about it tugs the tension you’re starting to feel up a few notches on its own, and you moan again. What would he _feel_ like?

“ _fuck_ ,” Sans whispers tightly. “do you... like being touched inside, too?” His eye lights waver with intensity.

Your face heats even more, and you huff out a breath or two before answering.

“I...not usually, but I want _you_ to do it,” you admit, feeling tension in the skin under your eyes. “I want you so much...I want to know what you feel like,” you breathe out unexpectedly. His teeth part like he’s inhaling your words.

He’d gotten both of his knees between your legs at some point; now he’s up on them but still leaning over you so you can hold him like this, and so he can peer into your face while he pleasures you. You lift your knees slightly and hold him loosely while his elbow bends and his hand changes position a little. The next time he rubs downward, his two middle phalanges sink inside you slowly. Their nubbly fine-china texture teases you open; his hand folds and his carpals press at you gently and firmly.

You shake and moan, because it’s like nothing you’ve ever felt before. Rather than heat and pressure, you feel a tingle that goes deeper than skin. That combined with the structure and surface of his fingers when he draws them back makes you feel like you might just float right up off the bed and through the ceiling. It’s so utterly unique to him, to having this experience _with_ him, it’s doing something to you that’s just as emotionally intense as it is physically.

It’s apparent he’s picking up on that as you stare at each other dazedly. You can’t stop your back from arching up, chest almost kissing his ribcage as he curls his fingers inside, curves his whole hand again, twists his wrist. The potency of this prolonged encounter seems like it’s finally caught up with you, overtaking you, and now you’re running after it as fast as you can.

“more?” he pants desperately.

“ _Yeah_ ,” you whisper harshly. “A _lot_ more.”

His phalanges draw back, teasing out of you and then rubbing your slickness around, coating themselves in your excitement. One of his femurs nudges under your thigh, lifts it a little. The next time his hand moves down, four thin skeletal fingers press you open easily, push inside and then _just keep going_. There's not anywhere near as much friction or resistance as there would be with human skin, and it’s not like he has a thumb webbing to run up against. Metacarpals slide right in just as easily as proximals.

You moan wildly as your eyes squeeze shut. Your head turns to the side reflexively, although he follows your face with his as much as he can as he penetrates you with all he’s got. Your arms pull him up a little almost of their own volition, but you’re not rough. Your lips seek friction against bone, the arm he’s supporting himself on. You hear him keen faintly as the cluster of carpals that form the heel of his hand come to rest flush against your body, his thumb stroking the junction of your thigh gently.

You press your lips again to what you see is his humerus as your eyelids flutter weakly. When the fingers inside you _curl_ , before you know it your lips part, tongue darting out as you whimper. You _taste_ him, a peppercorn tingle that blooms brief and ghostlike before it fades, and you hear a shocked, broken noise. Your eyes open and fly to his face. “oh shit, i’m sorry, i-i didn’t mean to-”

“holy fuck _don’t be_ ,” he sobs, sockets almost closed, eyes pinned as he tries to catch his breath. “you’re, heh, you’re really close. right?”

Your eyes shut again and you nod tightly.

“will you do that again when it happens?” His voice shakes with desire.

“Yeah,” you whisper tightly, and when you press your closed lips to his bones again, you hear some of his voice come into his breathing as his shoulder continues to work gently. What he’s doing is a lot more of a rocking motion than back and forth, curling and uncurling inside you as the nubs of his carpals prove their effectiveness. Despite his panting, there’s not that much real exertion involved. Most of the tension in him seem to be empathetic.

The uniqueness of having him inside you like this hits you again; you can’t ignore it, and you could never mistake him for anything else. It reminds you of something. The wash of impressions you’d gotten from him, what it felt like for him to have you inside him the way you had been before. Remembering the sound he’d made when you touched his soul for the first time, the rush of what you’d exchanged with him, is what pushes you right over the edge.

The climax boils up from inside you like an unstoppable ocean. It’s only when the third wave hits you that you’re able even to exhale, lips parting to let out a surprisingly quiet but guttural moan, tongue caressing ceramic-smooth bone that tastes like the magic he’s emitting, a simultaneously numbing and sensitizing sensation. You’re not drowning in it though, and you definitely feel it when Sans’s hard skull bumps your face as he half-collapses on top of you, choking out something unintelligible. You’re not hurt or anything, but the impact sets your teeth against him, and he yaps in brittle pleasure. He doesn’t stop, even as you wonder if you’re crushing his hand as your climax intensifies, then slowly, very slowly, ebbs away to leave you peaceful and satisfied on the shore.

He manages to finish falling on top of you without any more mishaps, although his positioning’s a little awkward with his arm trapped between your bodies. It’s not bothering you, and you also don’t really care that your ocean seems to have been more than a metaphor because wow, you really made a mess. You haven’t done _that_ in quite some time.

“shit, i didn’t hurt you, did i?” he quavers weakly. “i know ‘m kind of a bonehead.”

You squeeze him a little, giggling between catching your breath. “No, I’m fine.” You gasp again when he pulls what feels like his entire hand out of you, and loosen your arms as tries to right himself and finally succeeds. “More than fine,” you add, sighing. He collapses back down, next to you this time, and you notice he’s using his discarded shirt to carelessly wipe off his hand. That just makes you laugh more.

“might need to borrow a shirt later,” he adds shamelessly, then offers it to you. Just...wow, alright then. If that’s how he rolls, you’re just as glad not to get up.

“Sorry about the teeth thing,” you add as you try to do some damage control with the surprisingly absorbent shirt. “Did it hurt?” He responds by facing you, slowly pushing his narrow but sturdy limbs over and between yours, and you give up on the damage control because you’d really rather be holding him instead of controlling anything that’s happening.

“no, i think it’d be hard to hurt me that way,” he sighs fervently. His tilts his head as he looks at you, then touches your forehead with his. “was it good?” he asks quietly.

“Oof,” you grunt sincerely. “Sans the skeleton, undefeated fingerbone champion.” His flummoxed expression and the way his eye lights almost disappear has you laughing even before he recovers from his surprise, but his laugh certainly sounds flattered and gratified.

“are you hungry yet?” he shoots back, and for some reason it’s a lot easier to laugh about that now.

You narrow your eyes at him fondly. “Is it bad that I’d rather just go back to sleep?”

Rather than answering, he holds out his hand to you stiffly, even though it’s resting across your midsection. “have we met?” he deadpans. “sans the skeleton. recently crowned fingerbone champion an’ _lifetime_ nap champion.”

You crack up and take his hand anyways, shake it, then take a closer look. Oh, dear. He’s still a little sticky in the ...spaces.

“heh. yeah, the only thing that really gets that out is hot water. or fire, i guess. don’t got either in bed right now and i’m not about to get up.” He moves his hand, and you watch all those tiny bones working independently as a unit. “enough pushback in the gaps, so they don’t pinch you or anything, though. lucky me.” He looks at his fingers, suspiciously thoughtful. “not the worst spot to have to clean out later, at least.”

You can feel your eyes bulging a little as you look at him, and you wish your imagination wasn’t so good.

He just shrugs like a bastard. “don’t know whether or not ya like something until you try it, right?”

You don’t reply, but you think about that sentence in a different way while his face softens a little, then a lot. A mood of heavy, sweet satisfaction falls over you both. You might not be able to see how he feels on his soul, but you think you can make some pretty good guesses from looking at his face. Maybe that’s why you like it so much. You definitely like how he makes you feel so much, and he helped you know he feels the same. Which reminds you.

“When I touched you, what was the...” you think about it. “the magic you did at the end, to your soul? You did something, right?”

“hmm? oh, uh. yeah.” He looks a little sheepish. “just, uh, push a little magic in there, y’know. makes it stronger, right when you do it, and then it lingers. so you can hang onto the feeling for a little while after. s’nice.”

“Is that something monsters do to each other, or is it just something you do on your own?”

He gives a little half shrug. “either way, yeah.”

You try not to frown as the thought occurs to you that he’d _had_ to do it on his own because you literally can’t. And you’re not even sure why you’re troubled by it. The fact that you can’t see how he feels when you look at his soul hadn’t particularly bothered you, and that had actually turned out to be a bit of an obstacle. Maybe because this seems more like something he enjoys that you can’t _give_ him, and it leaves you oddly disappointed.

He’s giving you a strange look. “dunno what yer thinkin’ over there, but that’s not something anyone else ever did to me. wouldn’t matter if you could or not.”

That surprises you more than it should, and you find yourself asking “Why not?” before you realize it’s actually a _really_ private question, and you flush a little. But he just gives another identical half shrug.

“i like it the way i do it,” he answers simply, unbothered.

You remember how he’d sounded when he pushed the magic in around your fingers. It had maybe been too close to the end for you to really get an impression of how it felt for him that way, so you think about his noises. Not rough and intense like when you’d first touched him, not that that hadn’t been good too, but so _soft_. So profoundly satisfied. Your face heats further, and a surprisingly lively twinge of arousal echoes through you at the thought. His magic must feel very good.

It had certainly tasted good.

“You... are a very spicy skeleton,” you sigh contentedly. “Never got that nap you were going to have with me yesterday. What do you say?”

It’s no surprise his arms are already open.

What _is_ is that after a few minutes of settling in, Sans turns his back to you and folds himself tightly into your warm body. Skeleton butts aren’t that pointy, or maybe just aren’t when they’re wearing shorts. But his pelvis settles just fine into where you bend, and the backs of his knees lock in like they were born there at the front of yours. He reaches back to grab your hand, then pulls your arm forward and around him, _through him_ in the gap between ribs and pelvis, your soft forearm coming up to brush his xiphoid process. His spine settles into place against your belly. Carefully, he curls his hands in and cradles yours against his bare-boned chest. A sigh that sounds like dust settling escapes him almost unwillingly as he shudders and relaxes.

There might have been some rash confessions if you weren’t already out like a light.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I love the fact that Sans has multiple canon “voices”, with very different moods/tones. One of them is silent, uses capitals, far fewer ellipses, etc.  
> Then I become enamored with the concept that the reason he keeps his hands in his pockets is to make sure no one sees him talking to himself, which he does constantly like a total nerd. In Wingdings.


	14. put it together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Beck- Jackass](https://youtu.be/2HMhfdfxR98)

You know he can feel the deep breath you suck in, the one that all humans take when their breathing switches from the automated process of sleep to the voluntary and emotive action of consciousness. He knows you feel his spine pressed up against your belly, and that the way that first breath doesn’t come back out for almost ten seconds means you do in fact realize that no matter how you’ve flopped around with each other for however long, you can’t remember a time he’s turned his back to you. Not like this; not this close. Not with your arm threaded through his body like it’s never been anywhere else. He might not be the kinetic artist his brother is, but he knows body language, and how to express himself when it’s really important.

After wordlessly listening to each other breathe for what has to be a solid fifteen minutes, you finally break the most poignant silence you’ve been party to in your life.

“This might seem out of nowhere, but I think we should go out. Maybe get a bite to eat?”

“m’not opposed,” he mumbles a little thickly. You can relate. “any particular reason?”

You lean in toward his cervical vertebrae, just enough that the tip of your nose touches a transverse process lightly, and shut your eyes. Afternoon light washes through your lids a little, and it’s a perfect moment. Another one. Then another.

“Because if we stay here any longer, I’m perfectly happy to starve while reciting my life story in iambic pentameter as we methodically fuck each other to death,” you whisper regretfully. “And I’m obligated to live my life since I spent so much time fighting for it, remember? Can’t turn myself into a hypocrite.”

Apparently you can make him hold his breath, too. Good to know. When he starts again, you notice again that his ribcage doesn’t seem to move when he inhales and exhales. It’s not cartilage under your hand where he clutches it to the center of his chest; solid bone can’t flex that way. But it probably doesn’t need to. He doesn’t have lungs, after all. You wonder if he needs to breathe, or if he just likes it. You’re thinking too much again.

“y’know...i read your articles,” he says after a long time. “looked em up.” a huffed breath, not really a laugh. “one thing to know you got a way with words. ‘nother thing to be on the business end.” Your heart gives a big thump at that, and you exhale in amusement. He shivers a little when your breath blows down and through the back of his neck, maybe further.

“Sorry,” you murmur ambiguously.

“don’t be,” he answers ambiguously. “you can feel a little bad for my quiche, though.”

You blink. “Why?”

“it inherited all our trust issues,” he says in mock solemnity. “we abandoned it.”

You smile a little, nudge the process with your nose again. “It’s not like it won’t keep.”

You realize he’s not shaking because you’re nudging, but because he’s laughing.

“What?” you say, pulling your face back a little. “ _What?_ ” you repeat suspiciously when he starts laughing even harder.

“had a little prank planned,” he manages between increasingly less controllable chuckling. “or, more like a... little demonstration you didn’t know bout. i was gonna show you what happens-” he wheezes a little, squeezes your hand, “what happens when I try n eat human food _-_ ” Yep. He’s gone.

You frown at the back of his head, but he just keeps laughing. “What happens, you turd?” you ask, but you have to admit you’re starting to catch the giggles, too.

Apparently he’s laughing too hard to answer you, because he takes your fingers from his chest, brings them up further, then pushes them through the open space in his mandible until they touch his hard palate. Oh. You guess it’d fall right on through, then? Since it doesn’t dissolve?

“m’not even wearing a _shirt_ now,” he groans, yukking it up shamelessly. “it’d just-” he wheezes again, “-keep on going right through into my shorts….til it h-hit the _chair_ ,” and now you’ve got to let him go because he’s lost all semblance of dignity, and so have you. But at least it’s for a different reason than it would have been a few minutes ago. You’re imagining a bite of egg pie hitting wood with a wet splat, and what sort of look he’d give you when it did. Nonchalant? Sexy winking? You really do appreciate his knack for changing the mood. And apparently he appreciates your knack for sussing out what kind of mood is best for the situation, and letting him know. You sober up, thinking about what he’d said this morning. _Compatible._ Oh.

He’d rolled onto his back again, forearms coming up to cross over his face, but he lowers them as you both finish getting it out of your systems. You lean up on your elbow, still grinning down at him.

“Why don’t we get cleaned up? I’ve got a big tub.”

He opens one socket to give you a suspicious look. “together? thought you wanted to to go out. might not get very far that way.” He’s grinning, though.

“Well, we’re filthy at the same time, we can fix it at the same time. I’ll just have to rely on your iron self-control.”

That earns you another suspicious look, but he heaves himself upright and sits facing away from you on the edge of the bed a moment. The sight of his bare back, being able to see into his body, hits you again although this time it’s not lust that’s making your breath go a little funny. He just stays there for a minute, like he’s thinking about something.

“I’d miss you,” you admit in a soft whisper.

His breath goes a little funny too. It’s not that you’re keeping score, it’s just that...it’s time to sit up now. So you do, and scoot to the edge of the bed to sit with him a second, lean toward him to touch his shoulder with yours. It’s definitely afternoon, but you’re not sure when and you find you honestly don’t care. Not like you have anything planned for today.

“Do you have stuff you have to do today?” you ask quietly.

“nah,” he replies. “nothin at all for two more days.”

You sigh happily, then pull off your shirt so you and he are twinsies again. You touch his shoulder with yours again, and he tilts his head to smile at you rather sweetly. He lifts a finger, traces one of the heavy brown ridges on your chest lightly, making you shiver.

“these’re...scars, right? like frisk’s head?”

You smile a little sadly. “Yeah. It’s not from an injury or anything, though; i had surgery. I...have some really bad genes, and I didn’t want to die the way my mom did. The way _her_ mom did, too, I found out. Her sister. Cancer.”

You sit for another long moment, and think about who you’re talking to. “I think I would have done it anyway, though,” you say slowly. “But that’s the reason the insurance covered it. This was back when that was still the most important thing. Now, it’s usually...” He doesn’t have the same hangups a lot of humans have, and it’s oddly freeing. “I like it better this way,” you finish with a nod.

You stand up, offer your hand. He takes it and follows you into the bathroom, and you flip the light on. Magic, so it’s not as harsh and sallowing as a regular bathroom light. You start the tub, turn to him.

“Hey, I like it really hot. Is that okay for you?”

“hotter the better,” he says dryly, then flicks a thumb into his waistband, pulls, and his shorts fall to the floor.

Well, that’s interesting. You’re blushing now. Oops.

You stand back up, drop your own shorts. You hope it’s also interesting. You take a chance, look up at him. You grin at each other.

“I’m gonna put bubbles in the bath,” you inform him, and grab a bottle from the cupboard under the sink. “For self control.”

You do, watch them foam up for a minute or two, then plop yourself right down in them.

His interestingness goes right past your face as he climbs in after you. The spaces in his pelvis also don’t allow light to pass through, but in a more deliberate way than his ribcage does. It really is broad, and there’s not as much space between the bones as one might expect. His center of gravity must be pretty low; his ilium looks thick and heavy, even from the side. Light doesn’t illuminate the tiny holes in his sacrum at all. They’re almost as dark as the inside of his skull. Huh.

“like what you see?” he says with another wink, tucking his hands under the bubbles. Presumably to soak.

“Yeah. I do, actually,” you reply with a sincere smile. Huh. Seems like he doesn’t quite know what to do with that, but not in a bad way. Maybe he was expecting a ‘nice coccyx’ joke or something, but you just don’t have it in you. _That’s what_ she _said,_ you think to yourself, and it’s just too bad, isn’t it? An untapped trove of potential ribbing, many involving actual ribs. Sacrum? _Damn near killed ‘em!_ ‘I like your little holes.’ _Thanks, the feeling’s mutual._ Looks like you got a little skeleton in you. Want another? _I just gotta bone up on my anatomy_ _homework_ _._

“We’re feeling too emotionally vulnerable to make jokes about each other’s bikini zones, aren’t we?” you sigh regretfully, loud enough to make sure it carries over the rush of the tap.

“yup,” he replies, but his eye sockets are flattened at the bottom, and his grin is soft.

“There’s so many good ones, too,” you inform him sadly, then lean up and reach around him to shut off the tap. “What a waste.”

“no joke’s ever wasted,” he replies lightly. “just hang onto em. they won’t be less funny later.”

You feel a warm glow thinking about all the later you might have in store. Words like later, future, us. He just tosses them around like...not like they’re nothing. Like they’re _something_. You’re not used to that. You’ve really got to stop being so surprised by him...but on second thought, maybe you like it. They’re not bad surprises.

“much as I like blushin over here an’ watching your face journeys, got a question for ya. maybe you got an old brush around here somewhere you don’t mind if I use?” His hand comes up for him to inspect, draining water down his ulna. It’s so cool to you the way the bones seem to cross when he does that.

“You don’t blush, though. You just get shiny,” you comment absently. His eye lights flicker at you while you think a moment, remember something Frisk said a while back. “Like, a toothbrush?”

“gonna tell everyone the best compliment you ever gave me was ‘shiny like a toothbrush.’ yeah, that’ll work.”

You snort, feeling a steady warm glow as you rise up to grab one out of the preparatory multipack in the medicine cupboard. You’re getting water all over your floor, so you pull your old towel off the rack casually to let it sop up, then grab a fresh one out of the linen closet. You return to the tub and offer the brand-new toothbrush a little shyly.

He takes it, starts scrubbing lightly at his hand although as far as you can tell it’s already clean. Well, he’d know better than you would, you guess. You wet your face with your hands and try not to think about Nature Boy Papyrus booty-down in a burbling mountain brook like an old-timey hillbilly in a wooden washtub, scrubbing grooty out of his metatarsals with a bag full of disposable toothbrushes. You really need to have a word with Frisk about oversharing. At least skeletons can’t whistle. Or...you assume they can’t.

“Skeletons can’t whistle, right?” you mumble absently, then immediately realize you wish you hadn’t.

His head pops up suddenly, and he gives you a really weird look.

A short, high pitched noise that ends like a question comes from somewhere in his head.

“God _damn_ it,” you reply with a regretful sigh. “Where should we go to eat, you think?”

“not ta be a one-trick skeleton, but if we go to grillby’s we don’t have to find a ride. i got a lil space in the kitchen,” he says absently, and for the love of god he really is doing his feet now. Instead of averting your eyes and making it weird, you decide to watch him instead, hopefully to scrub the other image out of your brain. It actually works, which is nice. His chin’s on his knee, foot up on the side of the tub.

“You’re pretty flexible, huh?”

He tilts his head over at you a little, winks. Watches you stand up and start soaping yourself cursorily. You try to make it that way, at least, but he’s still grinning at you. It softens a little after a minute, though.

“you all good?”

It’s a very vague question, but you think you know what he’s getting at, considering it might be on your mind at this exact moment of your ablutions.

“Definitely. You’re a pretty smooth criminal,” you muse with a smile, then sit back down to rinse. “And I’m out of practice, too. Championship unchallenged.” You slosh water over your chest thoughtfully. “I’ve felt pretty good all day, come to think of it. I had a little pain in my shoulders last night but today’s so far so good. I’ve had a lot of good days lately,” you say, a little surprised, then smile over at Sans. He looks like he’s done brushing, and you share a lingering, minty fresh look.

His eye sockets narrow happily. “if you’re gonna wash your hair, we should change out the water,” he says eventually.

“Yeah,” you sigh, beaming.

***

You open your eyes to the sight of gleaming steel, inhaling the smell of hot, clean frying oil. You can hear the chatter of patrons and the clink of glasses, which isn’t too surprising considering it’s already getting dark out. Sans had finished before you in the tub by virtue of not having hair, and you _had_ missed him. When you’d come downstairs dressed and ready, he’d managed to get rid of the remains of the aborted human breakfast, and most of the mess he’d caused excepting a few strips of gluey dough that might just be a part of your countertop now. Oh well. Collateral damage.

This time Sans doesn’t let go of your hand as he pushes open the door into the dining room of Grillby’s, and he lets you help him up gallantly onto a barstool. You’d just chosen the spots closest to the door to the back, but you wonder what kind of effect it’d had since no one noticed the two of you actually coming in. Well, all except Grillby, who makes his way down to you soon enough. His attention prompts everyone else to finally acknowledge Sans’s appearance, generating much hooting and hollering, most of which you fail to understand.

It still makes you smile, though.

You both manage to give your orders between every person in the place finding a reason to come shoot the shit with Sans, singly and in groups. You realize it’s Saturday night, so there are more humans in here than usual. Your burger comes and you’re unbelievably ravenous when the smell hits you, although you still manage to thank Grillby effusively and creatively before shoving it into your mouth.

Sans has the fries again, although it seems like he barely has a chance to eat between telling stories and jokes to the rotating cast of characters reporting in with whatever’s been going on in their lives lately. They ask about him, too, and you learn very belatedly that Papyrus actually works at florist’s shop downtown a few days a week. Frisk’s been doing well, but has been kept busy with various unspecified ambassadorial issues. He keeps finding a way to dart you looks and winks the whole time he’s talking and listening. You’re perfectly happy to just be entertained by all of this while you feed your face, although you frown when two drinks, just like the ones you’d had last time, happen to be on the counter in front of you when you look up after having finished your food.

“I didn’t order anything,” you say curiously. Sans has just waved off a cadre of Dogs, who’d regaled him with some kind of tale about their cousin’s accident, based off Sans’s responses. You aren’t actually trying to parse the babble of multiple conversations filling the air around you, since they’re competing with music and clinking and there’s really no reason you need to. It’s not a big deal. His voice always cuts through everything, and it helps you keep track of what’s going on. If you need to pay attention, you’ll hear it from him.

He looks over at you, shuts one socket. “think they’re on the house.”

You frown even more. “Okay, but...why? This happened last time I was here, too.”

“huh?”

Oh, yeah.

“Frisk and I went shopping down the street quite a while back; that’s where I got my party clothes I wore to ARTBALL. They wanted to have a little talk and we were hungry, so we came down here and had some food. And the talk.” Grillby’s in the back right now, probably hustling to keep up with everyone’s orders since the place is starting to look almost packed, so he can’t chime in.

“He said our food was on the house because I got you to dance with me before.” That hadn’t been exactly how he’d put it, or at least how Frisk had, but you assume that’s close enough.

You don’t understand why that would put an echo of the soft shock you still can’t quite categorize into his features, or why it makes him reach over under the bar and take your hand. He just strokes the backs of your slightly greasy fingers with his thumb thoughtfully, watching what he’s doing instead of looking at you.

“You’re having kind of a weird reaction, dude,” you say after this goes on for a while, and his face gets softer and softer. He’s leaning his other elbow on the bar and his hand’s on top of his skull. It rasps back and forth for a second, then comes down to click over his eye sockets rapidly. “’s just...” he trails off, then his shoulders start to shake a little with quiet laughter.

“...not used to having everybody rootin’ for me,” he finishes a little tightly, fingers clicking over his sockets again. He sighs and puts his right hand back flat on the bar, but his left still plays with your fingers idly. “or, more like...hasn’t been much to root _for_ , i guess. not in a long time. they like havin’ a reason, and i’m...” he sighs again, but his soft smile’s not going anywhere. “they’re jus’ happy we stopped in, is all.”

Nothing he’s saying is really making any sense to you whatsoever, but you’re feeling a little warm in the face because despite your lack of understanding he’s still being extremely _cute_ , and you’re also not used to someone this willing to hold your hand like that in public. Eventually he looks up from whatever daydream he’s having and meets your eyes, sees your lack of understanding. His eyes flicker a little, but stay soft.

“you’re not shy,” he says slowly. “take a look around.”

You do, and you realize that anyone that notices you looking gives you a smile, a wink. No one else has come up in a while, not since you and Sans started talking quietly together.

“s’nice having people glad ta see you.”

It’s like all the bustle here is forming insulation around you and him, a kind of public privacy. Everyone in here looks at you like they all somehow know who you are, even though you’ve only been here twice, and the second time the place was deserted. Why…

“Sans,” you say in a weird voice, although you’re not sure what you’re feeling is bad or anything. “Did you say something to them about me?”

He tilts his head at you a little. “no? not like whatever you mean, i don’t think.”

You’re thinking hard.

“Does...everybody _know_?”

He just shrugs in confusion, and now your brow knits, and you're thinking even harder. Nothing you can Sans had ever done or said, or the fact that you’d been spending more time together and getting closer had ever been a secret. But it’s not like it was _so obvious_ that-

Wait.

_Wait._

“Sans,” you say quietly in a higher register than you normally speak in. Your hand slips out of his to cover your eyes, followed inevitably by your other one.

You swallow dryly.

“How long have we been dating?”

“while, i guess?” he’s starting to sound a little concerned. “i mean, i didn’t keep track or anything. you want me to?”

Oh my god.

Papyrus.

YOU DESERVE HAPPINESS, DEAR HUMAN.

That ecstatic _wink_. The perfectly unbruised stem.

_This is how careful you should be with him. Good Luck._

Frisk and their overly indulgent sleepover advice. Undyne and her _flowers;_ Alphys with her weighty sighs and ‘hey-relationships-ammirite’ talk. The seven million people in this bar that keep looking over and giggling like this is a puppy parade. You are truly unfit to participate effectively in society.

You pull your hands down finally and take a deep breath. You turn on your stool to take both his hands into yours, play with the white, slightly greasy bones, and look into his eyes. The concern there clears almost immediately.

“I am a fool in a human’s shoes,” you state decisively. “Do you want to do a romance with me?”

Now he just looks incredibly entertained. “...yes?”

“I am _not_ used to that,” you intone, eyes a little wider than feels natural.

He just shrugs again. Neither is he, of course. But that hadn’t kept you both from trying it anyway, even if you hadn’t been thinking of it _like that_ this entire time...for some reason, you just...wait.

You lean in to speak quietly. “They don’t know we...had _sex_ , right?”

Okay, yeah. Now he’s definitely laughing.

“you want me to tell ‘em?” he burbles outrageously. “could work it into one a my standup routines.”

You let go of his hands again, and take the drink off the bar in front of you. You end up pouring the whole thing down your throat before you realize it, but when you set it down with a clink and a lusty exhale, he’s still laughing. Softer, this time. You make a mental note to ask about ‘standup routines’ later.

“I didn’t think we’d be able to,” you say after he’s done. “Maybe that’s why I didn’t...realize? And I definitely thought you didn’t _want_ to.”

“eh,” he replies with an ambiguous movement of one shoulder. “had my own issues, like i said. still do. but i don’t get what you-” He cuts himself off, glances at you sharply and frowns in thought. “this a human thing i’m missing? gender thing maybe? like i said, monsters don’t have the same expectations. did you..” Suddenly, the happiness just sort of slides off his face sideways, and his eye lights dim and shrink.

“what if i _didn’t_ ever want to?”

Something in his voice makes a hot black cloud of shame boil up in you, and you feel a little sick. If he didn’t, or couldn’t, if it just hadn’t worked out, would you still be sitting here with him right now? Is that really the only thing that can make you think a relationship is ‘real’, the only thing that counts? Is that all he is to you then? Something must be wrong with you, and the cloud gets heavier. Or maybe the cloud’s not black, it’s just a very dark-

Blue.

You blink, and the cloud disappears like it never existed. You take his hands again.

“I _did_ think that,” you point out calmly. “I thought you didn’t want to, and that we couldn’t anyway, this _entire time_. It didn’t change how I felt, or how I feel right now. If you told me that right now it wouldn’t change it.”

You look into his eyes, tilt your head. “The problem isn’t how I feel,” you realize as you’re saying it. “The problem is how a lot of human cultures categorize relationships, and I can’t help but be a product of mine, I think. It’s a culture issue.”

“’m a fool in skeleton’s shoes,” he mumbles, a little of his smile coming back. He squeezes your hands and lets them go, then reaches for his own drink and finally sips it.

“I’m really bad at this,” you admit. “I’m not used to someone who wants to actually go out with me, bring me around their family and stuff.”

He’s surprised. “huh? why not?” You guess you aren’t the only one with a habit of asking questions you shouldn’t sometimes.

“Well, I’m not considered very attractive, I’m kind of fat, I’m too sick all the time to do most things, and there are about eight other things about me that people seem to think are nonstandard in a less than desirable way, gender included,” you sigh bluntly.

Weirdly enough, instead of trying to argue with you or rushing to reassure you, he looks extremely thoughtful for a minute, then pours his drink down his throat like you did.

“Let’s go out,” he says, and just fucking _beams_ at you like you’re the sun and he’s ready for fun. Whoo, that really had an effect. Or maybe it’s just his obvious regard for you combined with the warm glow of monster alcohol in your chest.

“We’re already out,” you argue, but you’re grinning anyway. You can’t help it.

He hops off his barstool and thumps back onto his slippers with an awkward seeming but obviously practiced motion. His hands disappear into his hoodie pockets.

“take me to a human place,” he says, winking.

You slide off your stool and face him, look down a little into the stars in his eyes, which spread out into little galaxies as you take them in. But you narrow yours a little in caution.

“Are you sure? It can be a little...hectic. Especially on a Saturday night.”

“i don’t think i ever-” he cuts off as you gasp suddenly. Slowly, you reach out and put your hands on his small, hard shoulders.

“I’m gonna take you _bowling_ ,” you say like you’re announcing someone’s firstborn. “For _real_. But I can’t drive so you technically have to be the one taking us.”

“not a problem,” he grins, then his hand reappears to take yours as he leads you back to the kitchen door. He waves at Grillby on the way, but with your joined hands. Good grief. This has literally _never_ happened to you before. “just gotta stop off at home, get my bike. You know where the bowling is?”

“No, but I can find out in like ten seconds,” you explain as you head back to the same spot you appeared from. You shut your eyes, feel the shift, but when you open them...it’s like you didn’t open them.

“Um..” you say into the darkness. His hand’s still in yours at least, but- oh, nevermind. He let it go.

“sorry,” he mumbles absently, and then illumination floods into...some kind of indoor garbage dump? You don’t see any windows, but there might have been one underneath the ragged floral-print blanket someone has tacked up on the wall at some point. One of the tacks is silver, the other is shaped like a surprisingly realistic cat’s ass, as far as you can tell. Under your feet is some kind of grayish carpet, but it’s barely visible under papers, stains, and coins.

Heaps of stuff are shoved up against every wall you see. You think there might be a desk or something under one of them, since a wooden chair with the back broken off sits squarely sentinel in front of it. Some kind of overturned machine pokes out of another pile, which includes something that might be the back of the chair. Are those handlebars?

There’s a beefy but bare mattress angled out in one corner. It’s mostly clear of non-bed-related items, but the big tangle of sheets and blankets sits on the inside edge, about to tip into the gap between the mattress and the wall. A few fallen pillows poke out like tombstones already, so you suppose the blanket wad’s fate is similarly inevitable.

When you finally find Sans, it’s only his bony shorts-clad ass that’s visible, since he’s bent all the way over headfirst into what appears to be a frozen waterfall of random shit pouring out of an open closet. Even more crap is jammed behind the half-open door almost to the ceiling, and you doubt it could be moved in either direction. You _assume_ it’s a closet; you can’t exactly see the inside very well. It’s as dark in there as it had been in the room before the light turned on, like all this is flowing in from another dimension. You can hear him rummaging, and you see the backs of his besocked heels rise up from the smashed, dingy insides of his slippers as he leans even further. His white leg bones gleam cleanly like pearls in a pigsty.

It continues.

“Where the _fuck_ are we?” you ask finally.

Sans heaves until his feet actually leave the floor, but tilts back upright somehow on the backswing looking slightly dazed, holding a canvas sneaker loosely in his left hand. The laces dangle, and a sticky ice cream wrapper is stuck to the end of one of them.

“huh?” he asks, eye lights dim. He looks around as if he has to double check, then his eyes sharpen.

“oh. this is my bedroom,” he says simply, shrugs. He tosses the sneaker into the middle of the floor, then he’s ass up in the trash again.

Holy _shit_. He just lives like this, huh? You can’t help it, you start laughing very quietly, and you end up staggering over to the mattress because it’s the only place you feel safe actually sitting down. Then you lie down, wiggle across and pull the blankets out of the way to look in the gap where the mattress forms the bottom of a triangle shape against the corner.

You pull out a pillow, thinking to lean on it, when you peer in and narrow your eyes.

There’s a bunch of _food_ in here. You roll over onto your belly and can’t help yourself. You start digging around. The light manages to make its way into the space partially, but it’s a little dim. You yank out anther pillow, seeing a lot of empty and full bottles with ripped and missing labels, looking like they’ve been reused dozens of times maybe. Each package is kind of a crapshoot on whether or not there’s anything in there. Empty bottles of ketchup, what looks like a full combo plate from Grillby’s with a napkin over the top, a plastic bag spilling out monster candies along with empty wrappers thereof. It’s like a fucking archaeological dig. There’s sedimentary layers.

“find anything good?” you hear the undefeated fingerbone champion ask mildly from behind you, then feel the bed dent in near your feet. You reverse your position a little laboriously, then turn over onto your belly again to watch him change his shoes.

“been doing this in front of you for a while now,” he says softly as he pulls the slippers off his feet. He’s actually changing his socks this time, too, and although one’s mint green and the other’s sky blue, they both have the little lace trim on the hem he seems to like so much. You like it a lot, too, you consider as he folds the crew socks over carefully, just the same height as the high top sneaks will be once he puts them on.

“They’re really pretty,” you comment, and you hear a soft, amused breath exit his nasal cavity.

“you really didn’t know?” he says, pulling on his left shoe, yanking the stuck wrapper off the end of the laces before pulling them taut.

“No, I...” you trail off. “I’m not _stupid_. I’m just...” You groan self-pityingly. “...stupid,” you finish lamely, put your forehead against the mattress. It smells like bones.

“nah,” he says, and you feel his hard, flexible palm between your shoulder blades. “s’ a cultural thing, like you said. i thought about it. maybe i shoulda said something, but i thought i did. thought i said a lot of stuff.”

“No, you did,” you tell the mattress. “Are you interested in anyone else?”

“...no?” he answers after a few seconds. He’s telling the truth.

“Me neither,” you reply honestly. “What kind of...what...are your expectations here?”

A confused sigh. “more a the same? that okay?”

You’re quiet.

“how bout you?”

“I aspire to be a fool in bowling shoes,” you say after another few seconds, then finally lift your head. “Everything you said is good with me. With..this. I’m _good with this_ ,” you try.

His eye lights don’t waver.

“yeah.”

He’s done putting on his shoes, so you pull out your phone and try to find the nearest bowling alley. It’s not far, and there’s a path that avoids the highway. You wonder briefly if he can drive Papyrus’s car, but you don’t ask. It doesn’t matter. You show him the screen and he nods, then stands up, holding out his hand to you.

You take it.

“oh, uh. just a sec,” he mumbles. He leans out ahead of you to peek through the door he’s cracked open, then swings it wide.

“down this way,” he mumbles again, and leads you out into a hallway that has two other doors in it, one of which he ignores. The other one he opens, although he doesn’t do any reconnaissance this time. Turns out that door leads to the stairs by the front door of his house that you’d noticed a long time ago, but had never seen open. Oh. Yeah, you guess that’s the Sans wing, or whatever. Papyrus has the… _other_ upstairs with the bathroom, and the downstairs is Frisk’s room. Or, rooms. Well, they’re an adult now too, you suppose.

As you head across the living room, a familiar voice rings out from the kitchen. You realize belatedly that weird smell is oven cleaner.

SIGH. I THINK I HAVE TO _INSIST_ THAT YOU PICK UP THE CLOSET. PUT IT SOMEWHERE ELSE THIS TIME. ALL OF THE SOCKS ENDED UP _IN HERE_ AGAIN, AND THEY’RE COMPLETELY _SOAKED_. IT’S HORRIFIC.” He sounds like he’s in the middle of a one-sided conversation. You’re just standing there, unsure what to do. Sans doesn’t say anything, or move.

“WE’VE DISCUSSED THIS,” and now he sounds a little exasperated. “STOP PRETENDING YOU AREN’T THERE, AND THAT THIS IS IN _ANY WAY_ SANITARY. THINK OF THE _CHILDREN_ , SANS.”

He meets your eyes in desperation, and you slam yours shut.

The garage door cronkles open, and you both hit the road, engine putting wildly.

***

Sans pulls a bottle out of his pocket and hands it to you. You twist off the cap, sniff, and-

“Are you...teleporting this into your pockets?”

His eye lights flicker at you in surprise. “huh? you talking about uh, shortcut? doesn’t work like that.”

He pulls his hand out of his pocket again and you see that he’s holding a thick black rectangle with a shiny glass front. His phone. They don’t look anything like human phones; yours is just a thin, flexible sheet with a fat case to keep you from losing it, like the majority of human devices. Monster phones have _heft_.

“You’re taking it out of that? How much...stuff do you have in there?”

The phone goes back into his pocket and he shrugs. “i got a little more space in there than most. did a little maintenance on it.”

You chuckle, then lean forward to stand up with a sigh. The bowling alley noises are almost calming, in a way, although the atmosphere isn’t anywhere near as friendly as over at Grillby’s. That’s almost like family, in a weird way. No one’s particularly looking or not looking at the two of you as you stay in your lane and do your thing. After a few amusing trials, Sans had pulled out a pair of leather gloves from his pockets, because otherwise his fingers are too smooth and narrow to gain any traction in the holes of the bowling balls. You’d made good on your bowling shoe vow, but Sans won’t change his shoes in front of other people.

You take your turn, wince a little as you start to feel it in your elbow. Maybe bowling hadn’t been the best idea, but you’re committed now, and you just couldn’t resist after Sans had chosen this as his example of things he’s never done before. It makes you feel all blushy. It had been a really good idea to go out with him like this, though. You have to admit, it’s really doing something for you.

Maybe it’s the way he looks at you. When your back’s to him, you don’t find yourself thinking stuff like _I wonder if he’s looking at my butt_ , or try to do things to grab his attention. Because...you already have it. It’s just _there_ , shining and warming you like the sun or like...you’re not sure. You don’t actually have anything to compare this to. You just know you don’t have to do anything to prove yourself, other than be here in this place with him and do a bowling.

It’s nice that he keeps pulling free drinks out of his pockets, too.

You saunter back over to him and sit down a little gingerly.

“Have you decided if you like bowling?” you ask, giving him a big smile.

“it’s fine,” he says, watching the people in the next lane being intoxicated in a very loud but happy sort of way. The place is packed, and although they stop serving drinks at 2, it stays open until six. That’s probably a bad idea, but here you are. Your joints aren’t the best ever, but you’re still having a lot of fun, and you’re not quite ready to turn it in yet. And before you do…

Hmm. Yeah, you haven’t taken any of your stronger meds today. A few days, in fact. You rummage down into one of your pockets and pull out your wallet, yank out a few bills. Shift a little, gauging.

You present the bills to the saucy skeleton across from you, waggle your fingers.

“Could you do me a big favor?” His sockets lift agreeably. “Get me a beer before they shut it down? For some reason, I’m feeling awfully nostalgic today.”

He takes the money, smooth bones touching your fingers momentarily.

“they got different kinds, or…?”

“Whatever’s cheapest,” you grin at him, wink.

“heh. gotcha.” He stands up, and you think about how his bones feel. It makes your face hot. “be right back.”

You lean back, watching balls roll down lanes, listening to the crack and rattle of pins. Some kind of music is probably playing, but only the sharpest sounds reach through the din into where your brain can make sense of them. Sans has been pulling stuff in and out of his pockets all night, including small bottles of monster drinks for himself, and one for you. You wonder if it’s bad to double up, the beer’s just to sip. You probably won’t even finish it.

Sans talked a little bit about how his habit of keeping and reusing discarded bottles started back underground, since monsters didn’t have big manufactories, didn’t mass produce that sort of thing. Even Mettaton’s brands were really just luxury items, or...designer, maybe? That’s what you’d picked up from context. But he used to go trawling in the garbage dump, finding useful stuff, reading materials, bottles empty and full...it was something a lot of monsters had done, apparently. And he’d just never gotten out of the habit. Explains the room, you figure.

You think on that a little more. Or maybe not. A lot of things about him seem pretty hard to explain, but that’s okay. You’ve got time. And that really warms you right up inside, doesn’t it? The fact that you-

“Hey! I said MOVE, jackass! Fuckin _freak_!”

It cuts right through all the background noise like a knife through butter. That does not sound good. You turn and look back over your shoulder, and the next thing you know you’re up out of your chair and low-impact power walking because some sauced up shitheel in khakis and a tucked in polo shirt is hassling Sans, who’s just trying to bring your drink back to your lane. Both his hands are occupied; you assume he pulled the other one out of his phone.

The spicy skeleton himself looks incredibly unconcerned, but you’re not about to take that kind of chance. As you approach (slower than you’d like but your joints), he dodges a shove with such casual ease, slippers shuffling smoothly across the floor, that the liquid in the glasses he holds in either hand doesn’t even slosh. Of course the guy trying to mess with him is half again his size, with an obnoxiously large wingspan to match. Sans ducks a swipe at his face just as easily, looking on with bored contempt. You hurry even more, sucking air into your lungs in the final approach.

“You got a _problem_ , fucko?” You pitch your voice to carry through the music, bowling noises, and babble of conversation, and the guy turns around to see who the hell’s interrupting the fight he already decided he’s going to have. Sans gets a weird, regretful look on his face when he sees you, but it snaps to something else entirely as the predictable yet effective volley of old-fashioned racial slurs sizzles its way into your ears, the shitheel staggering toward you aggressively.

“hey now, pal.” Sans pipes in a polite-bright friendly tone, shuts his sockets completely. The words emerging from his fixed grin seem like they’re carving the air with fresh wounds. “you fuck your mother with that mouth?”

He starts to bend, like he might be setting those glasses down on the floor in just a second.

As the guy wheels back around like an animal charging at whatever sound he heard last, you notice he doesn’t have a belt on his stained khakis, but a rubber band is tied between two of his belt loops like it’s… Oh. So it is. Since time apparently moves in slow motion if you're stuck on the outer edge of what’s rapidly turning into an encounter (and the air pressure feels like it’s about to drop the beat), you reach forward and just tuck your fingers into that little bit of rubber, hang on tight and let this guy get fucked over by his own momentum.

The sound’s even more satisfying than you thought it’d be. Nice.

Sans’s sockets go perfectly round as the guy starts to walk his own pants off, then stops and feels the rubber band break two full seconds after it already snapped him in the ass so hard he’ll probably feel it last Sunday. Of course a guy that unkempt is just freeballing it. Sans’s teeth part in astonishment as the guy tries to turn again, then trips backwards because the toe of your shoe somehow manages to be behind the heel of his ugly ass sneakers when he does, and he falls flat on his back right on front of you, squealing and trying to cover his pathetic junk.

There’s something wild and close to _unhinged_ in Sans’s expression as he starts to laugh, and both of his arms slowly rise, holding the glasses out in a weird crucifix pose. Like he’s about to pull some kind of a… _uh oh._

No one in the place is actually _looking_ at either of you, you realize. They’re too transfixed by the nuts-out dickshit screeching in butthurt and rolling on the floor like a pig.

You gasp as he lets them go, but he’s already barreling toward you, dumpy body churning at what has to be full speed. You have just enough time to open your arms, screw your eyes shut and catch him when he vaults crotch-first recklessly over the vanquished foe at your feet.

The sound of shattering glass gets sucked right out of your ears, and you feel your back hit a mattress heavily. He puts his arms out above you, catching himself too so he doesn’t end up knocking all your teeth out with his collarbone or something. You’re hollering in surprise and impact and he’s roaring with laughter and it’s so stupid and fun and you’re safe _you’re safe_ and oh my god that guy’s _face_ , what a _douche_ -

You yell some more because now he’s _tickling_ you. You’re back on the bare, beefy mattress on the floor of his bedroom, and both of you are doing some kind of stupid, slow, careful wrestling that’s still probably a _really_ bad idea. You feel the strain and you can taste your heartbeat but you don’t want to stop, though. You really, _really_ don’t.

He’s got his face in your neck again and he’s not really muffling anything so much as emitting this constant, growling chuckle as his bony fingers wander and dart all over you, poking and teasing while you try and follow them with your hands, grab onto them. There’s an electric, crazy energy happening and you try to figure out if a skeleton can have ticklish bones, trying to find _a funny bone if you will_ and now you’re scream-laughing and yanking the hoodie fisted in your left hand, and it’s all gone off the rails completely.

Instead of finding a ticklish spot, you hear him gasp as your hand claims his iliac crest, thumb stroking into the curve below the thick rim of it. The gasp turns into a full-voiced, surprised, and remarkably filthy groan as you pull his hip forward just the tiniest bit, the fattest, softest part of your thigh wedged up into his pubic arch.

You both freeze solid as you hear the unmistakable thump of a broom handle hitting the ceiling below, which is also the floor of this room. Apparently. One more thump for good measure. You have just enough time to see his grin curdle in unadulterated horror before his hand goes over your eyes and there’s another tilt. When your vision is returned you’re back in your own bed at your apartment.

The skeleton on top of you holds his breath for a few long seconds, then pulls his hand out from where it’s trapped under your ass with an uneven sigh, and flops off you to the side.

“haven’t got carried away like _that_ in a while,” he mumbles after a few more minutes of breath-catching for both of you. “i can’t believe i ended up in the _wrong room_ ,” he adds, sounding absolutely chagrined. “that’s _never_ -” he cuts off, shudders awfully.

“Yeah, I guess we should’ve just come back here in the first place. Not that my neighbors would’ve appreciated it much either, but I’m not _related_ to them.” You’re still smiling a little, but you do notice his eyes dart to the side at you, like that wasn’t _quite_ what he had meant by his comment. Whatever. You let it go.

“At least we didn’t wake him up?” you add, but he obscures his face with his sleeve-covered hands and grunts uncomfortably instead of laughing.

Awww. “I’m sorry,” you say, trying to smile less. “I’m not trying to tease you.”

Goddammit. Everything you say sounds like you’re giving him a hard time. You really _aren’t_ , though. Giving him...a hard time. Sheesh. You cover your face with your hands, too, and you both just lay there. You feel him shift, and you peek out a second. He still looks pretty sheepish. “I’m sorry,” you say again. “Are you upset?”

He rolls over onto his front, leans up on his elbows, and looks around his pushed-up shoulder at you.

“nah, m’not upset. an’ you don’t gotta apologize for anything, okay? just, he’s just gonna find a way to get me back for that, and i’m not looking forward to it.” He shakes his head wryly, but it looks like his smile’s coming back.

You pull your arms down, wincing a little.

“It’s honestly for the best,” you reply. “I did a lot of _way too much_ today. Actually, do you think you could go grab my meds for me? On the counter downstairs?” His smile slips again, but he manages to catch it before it falls completely.

“you want some water, too?” he asks, rolling over and out of your bed before you have a chance to say anything else.

“Sure,” you sigh. He probably feels bad for jumping on you like that, you consider as you listen to him shuffle down your stairs. And he really shouldn’t have, but you don’t regret any of your actions tonight.

You do feel a strange prickle in your chest thinking about how seeing you defending his...honor, or whatever, had apparently driven him right the fuck out of his entire goddamn mind. It’s not even like you _decked_ the guy; you hadn’t been lying when you said you don’t hit people. Giving them a little hand on their way to publicly humiliating themselves, though? That’s fine by you. It’s not like he hadn’t been about to do the same, and you don’t want him to have to fight, or encounter, or...whatever that was. He obviously doesn’t like it. You wish you knew what had him so riled up in the first place, or what has him so crestfallen now.

“you want the bottles or the other thing?” you hear him call up from downstairs.

“Bottles!” you try to holler quietly, wincing. It’s really late, and you really do have neighbors. Well, whatever. It’s not like you’re literally _ever_ loud in here.

He still has that flat, sheepish look on his face when he gets back with your meds and water. You wince as you wiggle up against the wall, take the stuff from him, use it, hand it back.

“Why the buttface, champ?” you sigh as he lays back down next to you.

“i just don’t want you to think that’s how...i am,” he says, sounding uncharacteristically sullen. You kind of hate it.

You push your thoughts around a little.

“You were right,” you say after a moment.

“bout what?”

“You _do_ make problems for yourself. I mean, think about it this way. The first day we were together in a way we had to talk about, we got so high on it we forced ourselves to go out and get rowdy because we couldn’t keep our hands off each other long enough to eat, made complete jackasses of ourselves equally in front of strangers, friends, acquaintances, and loved ones, then slept it off wrapped up in the world’s boniest blanket burrito.”

You’re already making good on that last part, pulling off your shirt and his with another few winces, but it’s worth it to settle in like this, finding out all the best places to put your limbs together. Pretty much every combination is fun, and your meds will kick in soon enough. And of course there’s the good vibes you both get off each other when you’re close like this. Not like having done other stuff makes _this_ any less enjoyable, simple, satisfying, and effective.

He’s looking at you in something like awe, eye lights changing from small and hard to bigger and dimmer. It’s like you’re telling him a bedtime story.

“How about this one. Hey kids. I ever tell you about the time your grandpa got in a fight at bowling alley with a guy twice his size? I had to charge in and rescue him from his own mouth, which incidentally is the _filthiest_ mouth I’ve ever heard on a bag o’ bones not even shoulder high to a Cadillac. He was so overcome by my gallant demeanor he broke every glass in that place right there on the floor, swooning and gagging at my next level butch apotheosis. Then he did his best Mettaton impression by taking a leaping swan dive into my arms like it was goddamn Shakespeare in the Park.”

“And that, my fine children-” you bring your face very close to his and make increasingly intense eye contact, “-is _where babies come from_.”

You inhale his breathy chuckle thirstily, press your face against his while you try and figure out a way to hold him _more_. He turns to face you and takes your hand, pulls your arm through the space between his ribcage and pelvis. The inside of your arm brushes his spine and he shudders in satisfaction. Then he sighs.

“if we never get frisky again, at least it’s not my fault,” he mumbles, but he sounds in much better humor about it. “nothin’s ever gonna unring that broom. i still hear it.”

You feel the urge to giggle, but after a second it drains out of you. Neither of you stop holding each other long enough to turn out the lamp. It’s been on for days, now.

“It’s for the best,” you say again quietly after a few minutes. “We weren’t exactly...it was probably a bad idea. I’m in pain, and you’re...you. Neither one of us is a reckless person. Why not be careful with each other, since we can afford to be? We don’t have anything to lose by that.”

Hard bones squeeze you all over.

“you’re right,” he whispers.

You fall asleep like that.

***

The morning light’s already in your eyes when the heavy, insistent knocking on your door finally wakes you up. Sans is tangled in your arms like a discarded marionette, snoring lightly, and you do what you can to emerge from your bone sarcophagus without disturbing his slumber. It works, since he doesn’t look like he’s in the mood to be awake yet.

You rummage around to try and find your smock-shirt from last night, but in the end you give up and just get out a new one. Pulling it on makes you flinch a little, but you’re in a good enough mood even though you’re pretty sure there’s only one person who’d be hammering on your door this early. Today.

The wind whips in chilly, although not enough to snow, as you open the door to your sister Angie's tearstained face. Both her hands are occupied by Shonda and Nattie’s, and the weight of the overnight bag isn’t the only thing bowing her shoulders. You look up into the cold, overcast sky, wondering where the time goes. It’s almost winter.

“Hey, babygirl,” you say with empathy heavy in your voice. “Why don’t you come in.”


	15. dogs for days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Fleetwood Mac - Rhiannon](https://youtu.be/U_aYibUx1B8)

Once you get the kids situated in the TV room, you and your sister head to the dining room, which is technically just part of your kitchen with a table in it. There’s a term for this but you don’t really remember it. Before you go to put on a pot of coffee, you turn back to her a second.

“Hey Ange,” you start a little reluctantly. “Sans is here, just so you know.”

“Oh, really?” she replies, and automatically looks around as if he’s hiding in the pantry or the trash can.

“Upstairs,” you sigh, looking significantly at the ceiling.

Yep. There go the eyebrows.

“Wow?” She leans in, her voice getting a little quieter but the eyebrows still pushing her hairline. “I thought you guys were like, more best buds style.”

You grin despite yourself and rub your hand over your eyes sheepishly. “I wish I could say this was a recent development, but it turns out I’m just exceptionally dense. We can talk about it, just...maybe later?”

She frowns a little, still doesn’t sit down.

“Didn’t this exact same thing happen with Anya? Wasn’t it four months before she-”

“Later?” you say with the lilt to your voice you know she knows means ‘please shut up now’ and she holds her hands up defensively, goes and finds a chair to put her nosy butt into. Not that you can really blame her. You’ve got a lot of questions yourself, but they can wait and so can she.

You prepare the coffee maker as quickly as you can manage, then fumble at your pocket hoping that-yes, there it is. You lean against the counter and hope Sans is in the habit of checking his phone when he wakes up.

You: Hey, just so you know my sister’s here with the kids. It’s complicated but she’s probably here because of our mom. You’re welcome to come down and hang out if you feel up to it but I won’t be upset if you want to take off. 

Your phone buzzes in less than ten seconds.

sans: be rite down just gonna pop home a sec

You smile and put the phone back in your pocket.

“Sans is probably coming downstairs in a few minutes,” you inform Angie, and then you pour each of you a cup of coffee.

She raises her eyebrows again, but the way that means it’s time for her to bust your chops about this. She uses fake concern to cover the real one. “You mean he’s not going to just jump out the window and run for the hills in his underpants? Guess it’s time to meet the family, huh? Must be serious.”

You notice Sans’s sneakers sitting in the boot tray by your front door, and listen to the impenetrably staccato sounds of whatever cartoon show the kids are watching. That must be why he wanted to go home, rather than coming down clacking all the way in “decent” but bare-boned feet. He must want to make a good impression...for him, at least. You blush.

“Wow,” she says again after your extended silence, a little more surprised. “Guess it _is_ , then.”

You blink, a relevant change of subject occurring to you. “The kids know he’s a monster, right?”

She laughs. “Yeah, but I’ll go and refresh their memories. And let them know he’s here, I guess.” She puts her hands on the table and heaves up.

“I’m taking this with me though,” she mutters and grabs her coffee cup off the table before heading to the other room.

Sans appears a few seconds later, and you can’t help smiling as you notice the pair of powder blue slippers he’s wearing look almost new. He changed clothes, but they’re the same kind he always wears.

“heya,” he greets you softly, then comes to stand next to your chair, leans down to touch his face to yours a moment.

“Hi,” you sigh happily.

“everything ok?”

“Yeah,” you reply quietly. “I _could_ wish she showed up because Matt finally fucked up enough to get her to move out here with me, but more likely it’s...” you sigh. “She probably... sometimes she just gets...” you trail off again, trying to figure out how to explain it.

“We just go somewhere, spend time together. Time with the kids, you know? Matt really doesn’t get it, and we don’t really care if he does or not so we don’t bother inviting him. She’s only been here twice since I moved, and I thought it might be about that time again.”

You sigh again, shift in the chair. “Our mom passed on my birthday. So we don’t um. I don’t celebrate it, and we don’t do mom stuff then either. It’s just whenever we need to. I figure it’s best that way.”

His face is unreadable. “doing anything special?” he inquires casually.

“We’re probably just going to take a walk down by the waterfront today,” you say quietly. Shrug. “You can come if you want, but it’s not anything exciting.”

Sans closes one socket, glances to the side.

“turns out... i just remembered i gotta work today,” he says, grinning nonchalantly. “so you guys go ahead, do your thing.” He shrugs. “ok if i stop by later though?”

“Sure,” you say, and you’re about to rib him for saying he still had another day free, but he’s already headed over to the living room, so you stand and join him.

Shonda looks like she’s in the middle of begging her mom for a sip of forbidden coffee when her eyes fall on Sans, and her mouth just sort of...stays open. Nattie ducks their head shyly, but otherwise seems to take the appearance of a living skeleton in stride. Angie stands up and comes over, holding our her hand.

“Nice to meet someone I’ve heard so much about,” she says, grinning crassly. Sans winks, and takes her hand in his mittened one to give it a firm shake.

“right back atcha.”

Angie turns to the kids.

“This is your ti-ti’s friend, Sans.”

They wave shyly, then go right back to watching their cartoons. Shonda glances back a few times, but since apparently skeletons mostly seem to just stand around and talk about boring adult stuff, you assume she absorbs his existence into whatever box boring adults she doesn’t really know well go into.

“Are you..coming along today?” Angie inquires hesitantly.

“nah, turns out i gotta work. might see ya later on, if you’re stayin’ a bit.”

“Oh, where do you work?”

Oops. Normal enough question, you suppose, but you’d taken a page out of Sans’s playbook of evasiveness to counteract questions from your sister as to his precise employment. It’s just as well, since you don’t actually know either, and assume it’s somewhere in the realm of sensitive-to-possibly-classified information.

Sans closes his eye socket again, and for some reason his grin turns mischievous.

“got a lil stand down by the waterfront. if you’re out that way later you could stop by. get some dogs for the kids, maybe.”

He winks at you.

“see ya,” and he’s out the door.

Angie looks at you. “I thought he was some kind of science guy?”

You shrug. “Some kind of, yeah.”

She looks at the door thoughtfully. “Huh. Guess a PhD really _doesn’t_ go as far as it used to. Everyone’s gotta make a living, I guess!”

You look at the door too. Sans is in fact a true master of manufacturing suspiciously convenient social situations, as well as conjurer of a mysterious and endless supply of dogs.

Knowing him, he probably had a fucking hot dog stand this whole time.

***

The kids are running around hollering by the trees while you eyeball the walkway for a place to sit down. Not that you need to yet, but you’re so in the habit of needing to you can’t help but scan everywhere for potential resting spots. It’s second nature.

“So, it was like a cultural misunderstanding? Are you sure? I mean, you’re really not good at figuring out when someone likes you for real, you never have been.”

You have your hands shoved in your coat pockets, since the day had managed to stay on the chilly side. The steady breeze generated by the water isn’t really helping either, but it’s not freezing. Just a little bracing, specially with all the walking you’ve been doing. Your meds are working despite the cold, so far so good.

“Maybe just let me think that anyway?” you say lightly, trying to preserve the shreds of your dignity. You fail, and sigh.

“Maybe I didn’t figure it out because I don’t think anyone’s ever liked me _for real_ before now,” you muse, then blush a little when you listen back to what you just said.

“Wow,” Angie says yet again. “Well, I beg to differ. I’m not surprised he likes you so much you feel like he is, because you’re _absolutely amazing_ and deserve someone who likes you that much-” you make a false swipe at her upper arm, which she almost formally leans away from, hand pressed against her extra heavy purse, “-but... I guess I’m just surprised you’re into _him_.”

“Huh? Why? Just because he’s a monster, it doesn’t mean-”

“No, no, not that he’s...you know. Just that he’s...” she gives you a look. “A _he_.”

You roll your eyes ostentatiously. “I told you, it’s not- it doesn’t work the same with monsters.”

Face journeys definitely run in the family, and it turns out the sight of your sister visibly speculating is unbearable.

“If you’ve seen a diagram of a skeleton, then yeah, it’s basically _that_ ,” you say flatly. “ _Just_ that. I’d rather tell you than have to hear or see whatever you’re thinking that’s making you look at me that way.”

“No, I’m...well, yeah I _am_ curious, but it’s more like...” Angie frowns, then just shuts up.

You’ve got a feeling what she’s not saying probably has a lot to do with questions she knows better than to ask and honestly don’t matter. A lot of things that really just boil down to trying to sort everything into categories she’s more familiar with. Every once in a while you do get bummed out that even as close with you as she is, chill enough to deal with Nattie’s gender stuff when it came down to it, sometimes she still has those moments. Moments when not having a category to put someone into creates tension that doesn’t really need to be there.

“I wish you lived here,” you say quietly. “I wish you all lived here. Even Matt, if you wanted to keep him around. Have you ever thought about it?”

“Yeah,” she says, surprising the shit out of you. “I have been. Especially...” Her hand goes to her heavy purse, just holds it a moment.

“I don’t know, it’s hard to do with kids. Picking up and just moving somewhere new, where you don’t know anyone...” then she glances at you. “But _you_ made friends, right? Some pretty good ones, from the way it seems.”

You almost hold your breath in an effort not to press, because pressing might make her dismiss it. You don’t want to hand her reasons to decide against it. You also bite your tongue to keep from shit talking her mediocre husband. It’s not like you hate him, but you don’t really like him, either. In a lot of ways you think your sister wanted a family so bad, for her own reasons, she was willing to settle down with the first person who’d give her one. You wish she had a little more of a loose interpretation of what a “family” can be, and that’s really just another reason you wish she’d come here to the land of ambiguity. Heh.

“I _did_ make friends,” you say at last. “And I’m not exactly great at that, if you haven’t noticed.”

“And all you had to do was almost get blown up,” she smiles, and you press your tongue against the roof of your mouth to try and control your facial expression. All you had had to do was _die_ , actually.

“What do you think would happen if humans knew more about our souls?” you find yourself asking. “More about monsters, and the ways we're different, or the same? Would we just find news ways to kill each other and hurt everyone? Do you think it’d just be, wham! monsters get sealed back underground after we take everything from them again? Or do you think there’s some kind of hope for humanity here?”

She cuts her eyes at you. “You’re asking _me_? That shit's none of my business. I’m a stay at home mom, high school education, don’t know shit about shit. I’m the last person who should be deciding the fate of the world.”

The wind whips past, carrying a shriek from the kids as they find something nasty under a piece of rotten wood. You really like this stretch, it’s like trees that go right to the water, but spaced out enough that it’s not creepy. It’s just pleasant. The sun’s even breaking through the overcast intermittently, raising the temperature by what feels like ten degrees each time, then dropping when it hides again.

Your mom would have loved it. She’d bring her guitar, set up right about there. Play a few tunes, maybe even busk a little if there were enough people around. You look; quite a few people are out today, even though it’s not especially warm. A lot of folks like to get out a few times before the cold season really locks in. There are a few monster families out today, too, including about 20 Froggits around some kind of barbecue pit. You can smell the slightly fatty smoke of whatever they’ve got in there, it’s weirdly appetizing. Or maybe you’re just getting hungry.

“You're selling yourself short," you state bluntly. "Who do you think 'most people' are? And they're the ones affected by all this. _We_ are. But it’s funny you say that, because I kind of said the same thing.” You press your lips together, then continue doggedly. “Frisk asked me if I think humans should know more about souls. In a serious way. A policy sort of way. They want my advice, and I don’t know what to think about it.”

You’d told your sister that Frisk is apparently more than the symbolic sort of ambassador than most people had been led to believe, but not the details. You’d definitely left out the part where they’d been making decisions like that from childhood. And Ange still doesn’t know about their abilities, or the truth about the...injury... to your soul. To Sans’s soul too, although you’ve got a heavy feeling what he’s got going on dwarfs what happened to you by a fair margin.

“Sans’s kid’s pretty important, huh? Well, the fact that they asked you for advice actually doesn’t surprise me that much,” you sister answers after chewing her lips a few minutes. “You said they don’t know that many humans? And you… you have that _vibe_. I don’t know how to explain it, like... You had to make big decisions about a lot of stuff since we were kids, you know? Once mom got sick, you had to take care of pretty much everything.”

She turns to look at you, smiles softly. “You took good care of me, too.” She looks down. “Still do, you know that? I hope so. I don’t know what I would have done last month without you, when the car went again.” She sighs.

“That’s what family’s _for_ ,” you answer shortly. What you don’t say is how much you wish you weren’t the kind of person people look to, how much you hated having to make those calls, and how much you wish your life had been different enough that you could have spent your time living it instead of fighting constantly just to keep your head above water. How much you wish someone could have just come and saved you, taken care of everything, and given _you_ someone to look to for answers.

Because you still don’t have any.

You look around for something to change the subject with, and to your surprise you notice a group of monster and human kids running past with some very familiar looking food items in their hands. They definitely smell familiar.

“I have a feeling we might be getting close to a hot dog stand,” you chuckle. “You think the kids are hungry yet?”

“The kids? Hell, _I’m_ starving.” Angie leans forward, peers down the walkway. “I think I see it?”

As you approach the weird-looking structure (like some kind of bus stop enclosure, but with a counter on top of a half-wall), there’s a crowd of cute monster kids raising mild to moderate hell nearby, but you don’t see anyone behind the counter.

Angie tries to holler the kids over twice as you both trudge toward your destination, then gives up and goes to the edge of the trees to retrieve them manually. As you get closer, you realize that the counter is in fact staffed... by a pair of powder blue slippers.

Sans is leaned back in a chair with his sockets closed, and you can’t help snickering.

“Hey, lazybones,” you drawl as Shonda and Nattie come running up, their mother looking peevish as she trudges along behind at a more sedate pace. “Working hard?”

A socket opens, eye light coming into focus quickly as it does.

“hardly workin’, darlin’” he replies in the same tone, making you blush and roll your eyes.

Nattie puts their puffy pink windbreaker elbows right up on the counter next to Sans’s slippers and lisps, “my momma says you got hot dogs for us?”

Sans pulls his feet off the counter finally, and his chair legs hit the ground again with a thump. He grins, one socket still shut.

“sure do, kiddo. hot dogs, hot cats, hot aardvarks. all sortsa hot animals. you got a preference?”

Nattie grins and start to say something, but Shonda interrupts, looking extremely dubious.

“Ti-ti says hot dogs are just sausages. Even though they don’t taste like sausages and nobody calls them that. So how can they be aardvarks and stuff? Did you make them out of aardvark? That's _gross_.”

“gotta order one to find out.”

“Oh, hey Ange. Have the kids ever had monster food?” you turn and ask as she finally finishes trudging up to join you. “That’s what the ‘dogs are, remember?”

She scratches her shiny forehead a moment. “Uh, I think so? Shonda has at least, don’t know about Nattie. Why?”

You shrug. “I don’t know, just figured it was hard to get out by you guys, right? That’s what you were telling me before.”

Sans must be on his game, because now even Shonda is giggling. She just turned ten and hit her extra serious phase with a vengeance, so it’s nice to see her cut loose a little. Nattie’s got their hands shimmied back into their sleeves and is flailing the empty ends around.

You dig around in your pocket, find the little pouch. You slap a big handful of coins on the countertop, and Sans’s sockets widen a little. You make eye contact with him and nod significantly, and he doesn’t argue with you about it. It’s nice to feel appreciated, and now he can have a little more decoration for the floor of his bedroom. It all comes back around as long as you stay a part of the cycle. You’re starting to realize that, and it helps that he knows it, too.

He knows how to make room without really leaving.

He deserves the appreciation.

Sans grins, reaches under the counter. When his hands come up he presents four dogs with as much flourish as Grillby himself. Then he goes back, gets four more. Winks. He explains to the kids that each one is a pelican, a manatee. A meerkat, an ocelot. Variations mark each one: grill marks, a bump at the end, one that gets skinnier at the sides; all of these are ‘proof’ of species. You remember the factoids he's paraphrasing into jokes from the nature documentaries he always watches. The kids are convinced because he makes them want to be, and run off to the group of other children to show off their animals before devouring them. It’s funnier because they’re not even meat.

You and Angie talk about the kids' school, the weather, your work. She gives you her purse and you hold it for a while. She calls Nattie back from going too far into the underbrush, and Shonda comes up to deliver a pointed lecture about a girl at school who's always correcting people. Sans leans his chin on his crossed arms on the counter, sockets half mast and grin lazy. More monsters and even a human stop by the stand eagerly, telling him stories about their jobs and families, updating him on their babies and their troubles. Some just banter and provoke, and receive their comeuppances accordingly. Each one slaps down a big handful of coins in return for dogs, although a few leave without taking them. He makes them disappear into his pockets with a wink.

Eventually the kids decide they want to go with a few of the monster kids to a playground further down, and you and your sister turn back to Sans before heading out. He scratches at his neck a moment.

“paps wanted me to ask if him n frisk could bring over some dinner later,” he comments casually, watching the kids shriek, flail, eat, and observe, each according to their natures. “just an offer, if you don't have other plans. says maybe you could show him your puzzle collection.”

Angie frowns at him, then you. “You don’t have a puzzle...wait, you mean those antique board games you like so much?”

You grin and nod. “What do you say?” you sigh. Angie puts her hand on her heavy purse again, watches Nattie explaining something apparently very dire to a Whimsun, Shonda crossing her arms and standing to the side, trying to pretend she’s not grinning from ear to ear.

You can usually read your sister better than this, but you really can’t tell what she might be thinking. Doesn’t seem like anything bad, though.

“Yeah,” she says softly. “That sounds nice.”

***

Three and a half hours with Frisk and Papyrus after a late dinner had been enough to send your sister and both kids _all_ the way to sleep. They’re laying around your living room wherever they fell, casualties of extended tabletop sparring with the world’s second most talkative living skeleton and the gregarious ambassador themself. Papyrus had insisted on making his spaghetti, but Frisk had equally insisted on bringing burgers and fries from Grillby’s to much protest and umbrage. Hence the lateness of the dinner and the necessity of microwaving the spaghetti.

In the end both had been consumed with various levels of gusto, the games had begun, then ended as your relatives had slowly bitten the dust. Papyrus had won pretty much all of them despite loudly insisting he’d never played them before, but somehow everyone felt very proud of their own individual performances anyways.

Your mother’s urn sits in its own chair adjacent to the coffee table. No one had felt it necessary to say anything about it, although Frisk, Sans, and Papyrus had nodded their heads in that direction at least once. Maybe you should ask about monster customs sometime, when you’re feeling more up to it. You’d commissioned the urn yourself, and designed it yourself. The front of the bronze cube is adorned with a geometric yet organic design based on the notes of your mother’s favorite song, and you’d noticed one of Papyrus’s nods had ended with a significant glance towards you. Artists know, you figure. The food he’d cooked for you all but hadn’t touched himself had certainly been very...artistic, as well.

The spaghetti’d still been very much every-flavor, but not having been blended and mixed with ketchup does a lot for the texture, at least. You had seconds. So did Sans, which surprised you since a lot the time he seems to give up on eating halfway through. Despite inexplicably (and charmingly) managing to be a fat skeleton, it’s definitely something inherent to how he’s shaped rather than something acquired. You can relate.

Right now he’s lay-sitting back on your couch with his sockets closed and hands shoved in his pockets, slippered feet stretched out and crossed at the ankle, but you think he’s “asleep” rather than asleep. You’re starting to be able to tell the difference reliably now; his grin flattens out a little more than this when he’s truly gone. Still, both Frisk and Papyrus had certainly pretended he had been asleep, ignoring him as they said their relatively quiet goodbyes to you, and asked the farewells to be relayed to your sleeping family. Frisk had seemed rather delighted to be somewhere that everyone knows ASL, too. It makes you feel a warm glow to know you've had something unexpected to offer. A sense of belonging extended the other way, for a change. It feels good to be understood.

You’ve already prepared the spare room that usually functions as your art studio and extra crap storage for their comfort, but you know it’s better with Ange and the kids to just leave them where they are. There’s no reason you can’t just bring the preparations to them instead of the other way around, so you get some blankets and start draping them over their steadily breathing forms. When you come over to where your sister’s face down in the couch and snoring, you see Sans’s socket open, the white point coalescing inside to peer at you mischievously.

Rather than taking a role himself, he had proclaimed that he was “on your team” and spent most turns with his eyes shut and chilling out. Papyrus had narrowed his sockets peevishly at that, but managed to keep his complaints to a relative minimum. A few times Sans’s fingers had clicked between your bodies with helpful hints and advice. Also a lot of extremely corny fingerspelled puns, leading to indulgent looks from the rest at your seemingly sourceless giggling. His tips hadn’t been enough to defeat the great Papyrus, but you don’t really care about that and you suspect he doesn’t either. It _had_ made a few of the games last a lot longer and get much louder than they would have otherwise, though. Long and loud enough to wear everyone out quite effectively.

His grin softens as you stand there holding the blanket to your chest for a long moment. You're not used to this kind of feeling, like everything's...okay. Full, somehow. Happy. It's not perfect; the not-empty chair still sits sentinel over your sleeping family. But you look around and feel like somehow, it's enough. This is enough.

You finally draw the blanket over your sister's snoring form, then hold your hand out to Sans. He opens his other eye and smiles, stands extra carefully to avoid joggling anyone, and takes it.

You go upstairs.

***

“we could go to my room,” he offers.

You frown a little. “Isn’t that just the same problem on your end?”

You’d felt pretty tired when you’d led him up to bed, but apparently the simmering affection and appreciation for him you’d been carrying like a pilot light inside you all day had been a mutual experience. Once you’d both gotten comfortable in each other’s arms, the happiness and slow wonder reverberating between you had grown impossible to leave unacknowledged. But everyone’s here, and it’s weird. And sure, your door locks. But...it’s weird.

He looks like he’s thinking hard. “we wouldn’t be at the _house_.”

You look down at him dubiously. “It...moves? Your bedroom. Moves around.”

“no,” he answers in all apparent seriousness, “i do.”

That doesn’t make any more sense. Okay, so maybe he _is_ bad at explaining some things. But right now you’re faced with a choice: an immediate explanation of how the mechanics of his promised privacy works, or actually being able to take advantage of it. And right now, you suppose your priorities are predictably skewed in a more hedonistic direction.

“okay. let’s go,” you grin, then shut your eyes and press your forehead to his collarbone.

The lights are on when you open them this time, at least, but otherwise everything’s more or less the same. You’re laying on the bare mattress, and Sans sits up to un-wad the blankets and grab the pillows out of the gap behind his bed again. Really seems like they just end up there no matter what. More or less the same. It’s…

“something _is_ different, isn’t it?” you say wonderingly as Sans pulls the surprisingly soft green blanket over you both. It feels broken-in, comfortable. Same reason you buy used clothes from thrift stores. It smells like him, but not _too_ much. Just a little.

“yeah,” he shrugs, then lays back down and snuggles back into you. “we got privacy.”

“Hmmm,” you say as he guides your hand back under his shirt to where it had been before your little trip, palm flat across the side of his ribcage. He exhales peacefully.

“You have a very convenient skillset,” you comment, then press your lips to the side of his grin to feel it soften into a smile. Feeling hard bone move that way doesn’t really lose its novelty.

His fingers slowly move away from yours to stroke your upper arm, leaving your hand to roam him freely. Your palm slows, then stops. You don’t stop tracing his face with your nose, but after a minute he backs up a little and you see his eye lights focus on your expression.

“s’okay if you don’t wanna,” he says quietly. When you don’t answer right away, he asks, “something else, maybe?”

You’re looking into him, the spot where his cervical spine becomes thoracic, obscured and revealed by more than just the shadow under his jaw. His shirt’s pulled down a little, and you can see the space inside him where you know the light stays dim, even if he were to take the shirt off entirely.

“I don’t know what this feels like for you,” you admit quietly. “I don’t want to make a mistake.”

“feels good,” he answers readily.

“Not always.” You hope he knows what you’re getting at.

He exhales heavily. “m’not shy,” he adds. “not scared, either. it feels good the way you do it.”

You touch your forehead to his. You think about the way he’d pushed his finger between his ribs, the neutrality of his voice. His face.

“Does it feel good the way you do it?”

His exhale is amused this time. “sometimes.”

“I don’t want to make a mistake,” you repeat softly. “And I can’t _see_ how you feel. We said we’d be careful.”

His eye lights flicker, dilate. His next exhale is uneven. “can I take our clothes off?” he breathes, instead of acknowledging the question you haven’t asked yet.

“Yeah,” you smile, then sit up a little. You assume he meant he’d like to do it, and he does. He’s not coy about it, but he pulls off shorts and shirts with care and enjoyment. When you lay back down facing him he moves your arm, the one you’re laying on as you face to the side, lower than you expected. When he lies down that arm ends up underneath him in the gap between his ribs and pelvis, and he brings your hand up to the front of his chest. You can hold him comfortably in ways you can’t with a human, and wow. It’s _nice_. He reaches back for your other hand, places it on his iliac crest with a deep sigh.

Both of you lay like that for a little while. You nudge his vertebral processes with your nose, touch them with your lips. Your thighs come up to nudge at the backs of his femurs, and you feel his bare pelvis settling into the front of your fleshy one. That’s...interesting. You reach down to pull the blanket back up over your hips, but no higher, just because it feels nice against your legs, just like he feels nice pressed to your front. Cozy and comfortable.

“You make a really good little spoon,” you breathe into his neck, and you feel him shudder, resonating with your words. You press a kiss to another of his vertebral processes, holding him a little tighter and exhaling heavily enough for it to blow through him a little. You feel like there’s some kind of resistance, or maybe it’s just a few bones batting the air back towards you. You rub your thumb very gently into the curve of his ilium, and this time you feel as well as hear the gentle clack of what you notice is his spine, now it’s pressed into you so closely. A very subtle wave of something that travels through it, although your can’t necessarily tell exactly what or how. It’s _lovely_.

“That’s good?” you ask after it happens again.

“yeah,” he whispers softly.

“I like it,” you add. “This was a good idea. I like the way you feel.”

“s’mutual,” he breathes as you rub the inside of your leg over the top of his, feeling how smooth and hard the bones there are. “gettin’ harder to talk, though,” he mumbles thickly, and that’s the tone you’ve been waiting for.

“Can I touch your soul?” you ask, and he sucks his breath in like he’s been waiting for this moment all day.

“yeah,” he exhales, and his hand slips underneath yours on his chest, where you’ve been feeling his pulling magnetism increasing. You tilt your head up so you can watch him, and it’s still the most beautiful thing you've ever seen in your life. Despite lying on your sides, it’s still oriented the same way, and for a moment it strikes you that some sort of force outside anything you’ve ever understood, something about him in relation to the universe, holds its direction true. You shudder and moan in awe, your breath traveling through him again. Everything he is floats there, so strange and so precious to you.

You watch his phalanges brush the surface of his soul lightly, and you almost subconsciously rub his ilium with your thumb again, like an empathetic muscle memory. The breath that escapes him has voice in it, low and soft.

“you make me feel so good,” he half-slurs, sounding like he’s about to tip over and fall into himself.

“I’m ready,” you whisper into his neck. Your hand’s been hovering well back behind his, but at your words he pulls his fingers away from his soul and brings them up behind yours. This time, however, he twines them together before curling in.

“like this,” he sighs, desire clotting and suffusing his voice, slowly drowning it. And that’s okay because now you’re both touching him and it’s exactly how he imagined it would feel. A little softer this time, but he still arches back against you tightly, bare ankle twining yours as he groans with the intensity of your touch.

Eased without being too easy. He likes it.

That’s what your thigh pushed into his pubic arch had reminded him of, had made him imagine: this. Soft and sudden, controlled but still close to overwhelming. When he touches _with_ you, it calms and steadies him; he also has a little more control over what you feel from him this way. He’s still breathing raggedly, but he’s not panting and weeping. His other hand moves down and slowly takes your fingers from his iliac crest, moves it up toward his ribcage. He drags your hot skin across the flat of his ribs, and it feels so good. Soothing, generative of desire rather than provoking it. It neither demands nor agitates.

When he guides you over his sternum, you understand that this also feels good to him the way it had before, the time you first touched him like this. You’re quietly amazed to realize that despite his soul being exposed and delicate under both of your fingers, you also still feel it drawing resonant and magnetic in his chest because it exists inside him and outside at the same time. He also demonstrates how far away from his body his soul can be comfortably taken. He can’t be harmed that way, but more than this and it will slip through and back toward him, leaving your touch behind.

Everything about him is an absolute marvel. You rub your cheek against his skull almost lazily, gazing into his soul under heavy lids, even though your eyes can tell you nothing other than it is so very, very beautiful. Your fingers in his soul, however, tell you that he wants to know what it feels like when you touch between his ribs. _His_ fingers in his soul help keep both of you from experiencing any backwash of negative associations or previous discomfort. He thinks you’re very clever, and that this was a good idea on both your parts. He always makes things complicated, so three kinds of touching at once for starters _is_ probably his speed. It makes you smile, press a kiss to his zygomatic process. You taste his magic when your tongue dampens your lips right after.

“Do you want to show me, or do you want me to try it on my own?” you whisper, feeling almost dazed with desire, yet alert and attentive. You’re in tune with what he wants.

His arm comes up and around in response, reaches back almost impossibly at the shoulder so his fingers can stroke your hair, tickle the back of your neck with bone fingertips. As his ribs arch out under your tentative hand, an unstoppable wave, a solid _wall_ of pure trust and sweet longing washes over you, pushes a shuddering groan out of your throat. There’s nothing passive about the way he offers himself.

You run the pads of your fingers flatly over the hard, slick-smooth outside curve of his ribs. Their heat and pressure excites him, feels strange and familiar at the same time. Feels like _you_. His breath gathers in anticipation as you draw your fingers to the spot you’d touched the first time, the second intercostal space. You slide your finger between the ribs there as he exhales, close to the sternum because he likes warmth, pushing. And that’s what it feels like, blunt and hot. He likes it when you do it, he can feel the way your touch is careful, reactive. For you, it feels like the same resonance as when you touch his bones from the outside, but somehow from more than one direction. There’s a… _between-ness_ to it. You like it, too.

He makes a quiet sound of contentment when your finger curls, brushes the inside of his bones. It’s not as smooth there, since it doesn’t get touched as often, hasn’t been polished as much by clothing and brushes. This is definitely a private space, and the feeling of _pushing_ increases when you do this. He wants more, so you try two fingers into the same space. The most striking thing about this to you is that while his pleasure _does_ increase, it isn’t...directional. It just _is_.

His hand is still on your head, and he guides your mouth gently to his cervical vertebra because he wants to know what it feels like when you taste him, _here_. He’d liked it so much when your tongue had darted out against his arm bones. He moans and controls a shudder so your teeth don’t knock him as your open mouth presses his spine, tongue pushing ( _oh_ ) into the small spaces between. It’s even hotter than your skin, then _cool_ with moisture. The breath from your nose blows right down into him, almost to where your fingers penetrate his ribcage, two fingers in different spaces now.

You feel tingling where your fingers twine with his and blend into his soul, and you're glad his magic’s helping him feel _this_ moment, now. You understand that being grabbed here unexpectedly would be uncomfortable, and you slide your fingers over the outside of his sternum carefully, fingers spread wide to curl into three different spaces and brush the inside of it tenderly. You pull back your mouth as he fails to suppress the shudder this time, and his soft groan and panting breath deepens your physical arousal considerably.

Desire and pleasure continues to pool in him, but it’s still not shoving him _towards_ anything. He arches again because he wants to feel your hand on his spine, between his ribcage and pelvis. It feels incredible, makes him moan and twine his ankle with yours again when you hold it, rub it with your soft, heated palm. Nothing in him screams more, harder, faster; this is exploring, not progression. It’s a slow journey outward from the point at his center where the pleasure of your touch had first bloomed in him; you rub your hand back up his ribcage, along the underside of his humerus. When you touch his iliac crest again, he moans raggedly and spreads his legs; he wants your thigh in his pubic arch again. You bend your leg forward and bring it up between his femurs obligingly. He tilts his hips back almost sharply to get what he wants, hot and full without any clothes between this time.

The pleasure filling him is massive, almost sloppy. He’s _drunk_ on it, body twisting slowly in ecstasy. You can feel his magic intensifying where you both touch his soul. His hand takes yours and guides it down inside his pelvic cradle as he grinds back onto your leg, groaning helplessly now as he arches far past human ability against you to keep as many points of contact as possible.

Magic beads his skull, and you kiss it openmouthed this time as he slides your palm down his sacrum’s inside curve, pressing a little more firmly than you would have to make sure you know how he likes it. Blunt and hot. Because this is the feeling he wants to carry with him, he’s pushing his soul back toward himself, panting into a choked whine as he twists his subpubic angle into the soft, warm meat of your leg.

The whine breaks open into a satisfyingly throaty, cracked moan as fingers and phalanges together touch his sternum, magic tingling and dissipating as they flatten against him. There had been no tension in his body before, so there’s none to have been released, but he’s so pliable and willing as you gather him up into your arms and nuzzle him it certainly _feels_ postcoital in a way your body recognizes. You’re soaked.

His arms are wrapped loosely around your shoulders, and his face lolls against your neck. He’s so _floppy_ , which is kind of an accomplishment for a being made of bones that hard, and he hasn’t entirely stopped moaning, either. He must not have been kidding about it...lingering.

“Are you okay?” you ask softly, rubbing the inside of your wrist on his shoulderblade.

“mmm,” he replies vaguely, although his voice does seem to be deepening back towards his usual range. You can tell he’s trying to catch his breath, and you press a few more kisses to his skull. “sss’jus...better’n i imagined...” he slurs eventually, then inhales deeply, lets it out as evenly as he can. He finally tilts his head back and looks at you, eye lights dimmed from their massively increased diameter. “n let me tell you, i did a fair ‘mount of imaginin’. had me hot n bothered all day at work. _woof_.”

That surprises a laugh out of you, and he joins you a little more robustly, having finally stopped moaning like a wanton. Not that you mind that at all. It’s just…

Oh, okay. His hands have already started roaming your body, and it’s very nice to have this without any clothes on at all. Gooseflesh shivers across you in appreciation of his caresses, and he exhales in amused fascination watching it come and go. You roll onto your back as he presses forward a little, and he sets the socket of his left eye against your right so you can see how big and fuzzy the light in it remains.

“you gonna let me try an pay ya back for how good it was? don’t even got words for _how_ good. luckily you were _there_ ,” he chuckles quietly. When his hard, flexible palm runs over your chest sensuously, he goes right back to moaning when your hand quickly comes up and covers his, presses it suggestively.

“speakin a lucky,” he whispers dryly, pressing his face to the pillow beside your head.

“Will you take my soul out?” you whisper harshly, agitated. You want...something.

“you sure?” he pants a little roughly, leans up to look at you.

“ _Please_.”

The groan as your soul slips from you this time isn’t so soft. It’s desperate. Sans sounds like all the air’s getting pressed out of him somehow, although his ribcage still doesn’t move.

“sorry,” he whispers quietly. “lemme-”

He cuts off as you start to press his hand toward you.

“hey.” You stop. His voice isn’t corrective, it’s compassionate. “this doesn’t work like that, ok?”

You breathe heavily in frustration, but you see the fear blooming in you. He can see it, too, and you both watch it change to something else without actually going anywhere. His hand moves down your arm, satin-steel fingertips caressing lightly. “it's not me you need to be asking. do it like i do.”

You pant a little but don’t move. He puts his face back in your neck, the pillow.

“i won’t look. s’okay. i still feel it.” The hand under the back of your neck caresses you a little, and his femur’s thrown over your leg. The fingertips brush your forearm again, then move to your belly.

You touch yourself hungrily, but it's not what you wanted to hear. You have your answer but it doesn’t calm you.

“I’m not ready,” you whisper.

He leans up just enough to see your face.

“Look,” you say tightly.

He does. It’s very complicated, but he’s good at complicated. It’s also very simple when seen from the outside.

“yeah,” he says, the points in his pained sockets fuzzing back out. He looks from your soul to your face, and they contract and focus. “me too,” he pants with an unaccustomed urgency. "yeah?"

Your soul slips back where it goes, and your arms reach for him carefully, insistently. He lifts his chin and offers you the bones in his neck, and it’s almost too much. You shove your tongue at his vertebrae as he pushes your legs apart, growl frantically as his fingers shove into you roughly. One more push and you’re already climaxing, and your teeth set very carefully against bone that could break them. Could break each other.

“don’t stop,” he gasps, and he doesn’t either. He gives you even more. You pull back, pull him up but only so you can start on his collarbone. You taste him again, the tingle that dissipates somewhere into your flesh. You set the arch of your foot carefully on his iliac crest and tilt your hips; eased, but not too easy.

“i still _feel_ _it_ ,” he groans as your mouth finds the small gap between his first rib and clavicle. “gonna feel it for _days_ ,” he chokes as you tongue fuck him sloppily. You pull it out as you lose control and climax again, staring down into his impossible body while you hold your breath, then throw your head back with eyes screwed shut to give voice to a desperate wail. Your limbs are shaking a little but he still doesn’t stop; he grabs your leg and pulls it over his shoulder, shoves his body forward to fold you in half. His forehead touches yours, and you open your eyes to impossible galaxies in timeless darkness, and he’s all that you see. He’s all that you feel.

“you can do it,” he whispers tightly. “one more. give me one more,” and you feel his breath explode raggedly against your lips. You suck his words in greedily while he makes you forget there’s ever been anything but this. He twists his wrist, and you _can’t_ think anymore, only feel, and take. He pushes his weight into you, and your arms pull him closer, wrists against his shoulderblades. You want him _closer_. He beckons you in return, and you give him what he asked for. White noise and white heat drown you; you don’t hear what sound you make.

Your leg falls off his small, hard shoulder and you yelp as he slips out, shudder as your legs come back together. He lies down on top of you, legs sprawled out to either side and breathing almost as heavily as you are.

It’s nice.

“You’re really good at that,” you grunt under his weight sometime after your senses return to you. Control of your limbs, not quite. You’re exactly as floppy as you hoped you’d be. Everyone’s nice and loose now. Everyone’s gonna feel it for a few days.

“likewise,” he sighs.

You feel like you could really quibble about that equivalency if you wanted to, but you decide not to. Instead, you frown a little at his ceiling and notice a few textural inconsistencies that seem to regular to you to be accidental. Sans finally leans up and falls on his side next to you heavily, and when you glance down at yourself you can’t help laughing.

“that’ll leave a mark,” you wheeze, and when his sockets open suspiciously, he looks down and sees where his ribcage left little dents in your skin. He touches one hesitantly with a distal phalanx, glances at you.

“that hurt or anything?”

You grin sleepily. “Not at all. Nothing hurts. Just...feels...” You try to think about where you’re going with that sentence. Huh.

“Lingering,” you try.

“huh,” he replies, face smoothening. You manage to turn on your side towards him, get nice and tangled up together again. He caresses your face with his a little bit.

“i might be gone when you wake up, depending. gotta work,” he sighs regretfully.

“Yeah,” you answer simply, since he’s already told you as much. Nothing for two whole days, he’d said, which makes you smile more when you think about his hot dog stand. “How many jobs do you _have_?” you ask, smiling.

“eh. depends on the day,” he muses, sounding half asleep already. “might be busy for a lil bit this time.”

“We kind of have somewhere we should be right _now_ ,” you point out, and he opens one socket, eye light focusing in confusion.

“oh yeah,” he grins, and when you close your eyes pointedly, you feel a slight displacement of air. You’re back in your bedroom when you open them again. The lamp’s still on. It’s been on for days.

You don’t let him go to turn it off, and you also don’t bother to point out that he forgot both of your clothes.

You just relax and let yourself drift off to sleep.


	16. helping hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [The Mountain Goats - Oceanographer's Choice](https://genius.com/7930126)

“The glass is beautiful,” you sign to Frisk in awe. “It looks very old.”

“The palace here is where the barrier was the thinnest,” they reply. “Light would come through, just enough so that you could see light coming in through the windows when you were in here, too. Not bright, just enough to see by. Not like the throne room. You could grow flowers there. Not here.”

You’d finally texted Frisk and let them know you were ready to give them your advice. They knew what you meant. For some reason they’d insisted on taking a trip to UnderEbott, and since you’ve never been here before, you agreed. It actually isn’t too terribly far from where you live, maybe half an hour longer than Alphys and Undyne’s house, all the way to the mountain itself and then, of course, under it.

The entrance they’d led you to is through the palace in New Home, and you hadn’t gone much further until you’d hit this... passageway? Chapel? No one lives here anymore, of course, but the building functions as a sort of state hub, if context and what little information there is available can be extrapolated upon. A government building, maybe? It certainly is grand, and surprisingly tasteful in a lot of ways. The windows here have the Delta Rune emblazoned in warm yellow glass, giving the entire hall an otherwordly yet almost comforting glow. It must be much brighter now than when Frisk is talking about, since most of UnderEbbot is now as riddled with entrances and portals to the surface as a slice of swiss cheese.

Well, whatever reason they’d chosen this odd venue for discussion isn’t likely to change what you have to say, so you just begin.

“I realize now that I couldn’t tell you what I think because you needed to give me more information. But I had to heal from what happened before I could be… able to hear it. Without getting hurt more.”

Frisk nods carefully.

“I just have...one question.” You glance to the side, then back at Frisk’s impassive face. “I mean, before all that.” You take a deep, bracing breath.

“What did I say to you before you made it unhappen?”

Frisk stares at you for a long time, and you wonder if you need to be more specific. But no, they know exactly what you’re talking about. They’re thinking.

“What if telling you hurts you again?” they say instead.

“I don’t actually remember the rest of what you told me,” you answer slowly. “I only know that you did. Which I know because… Sans told me. But I ended up remembering that I said something to you, that maybe even made you...do that. So we didn’t die. That memory came from _me_ , like I gave it back to myself, somehow.” And it had, during one of your post-Vulkin-hug sessions. Maybe that’s why you’re here now.

“You asked me if I could accept our deaths, that it could just...end there. How did I answer your question? I want to know.”

Frisk looks at you for a long time, and just when you think they’re not going to say at all, they do.

“You _didn’t_ answer my question,” they sign decisively.

You blink. “What did I say?” you ask for the final time.

“You told me you loved me,” Frisk signs, and they seem confused. “You smiled.”

You mouth falls open slightly. “But I didn’t even really know you.”

“I know,” they reply, seeming just as nonplussed as you are. “I guess that’s why. Maybe I just couldn’t let the mystery go, and it just sort of happened.” For some reason, Frisk isn’t telling you the truth. But they continue anyways. “That used to happen here, too. Using this ability is what allowed me to...that allowed the barrier to be destroyed.” They frown a little. “There are still a lot of things I can’t tell you. That humans will never know. But here is what I do think you should know.”

They sigh, take a moment. Then they begin.

“Humans don’t actually _have_ magic. They never did. What they do have are souls, and the ability to affect magic with them. It’s complicated, because everything about humans is physical except their souls, while monsters’ bodies are mostly made of magic. There’s not a lot of physical stuff to them, but there is some. You can...see it when they...die. They can do magic, because they are magic. Magic and souls are the...same, in a way. Monsters souls and their bodies aren’t as separate as ours are.”

“Human souls are stronger than monster souls, by a lot. That’s part of what I’m not sure humans should know about, because although it doesn’t matter for most things, they also work differently as well as looking different.” They press their lips together as they notice you may have already known some of those things, but they don’t seem annoyed. You try very hard to not think about why you know some of those things already, and manage it. Almost.

“But you can’t actually give your advice if you have no idea what the implications might be, right?”

You nod, and they continue.

“I thought human souls had been fine even though monsters and their magic had been sealed away completely for so long, but I think I might have been wrong. We were never fine. But they weren’t fine when the monsters were here a long time ago, and we’re not fine now, either. That’s hard to accept.”

They give you a long, hard look, and seem to change the subject yet again.

“You know that Sans is...vulnerable, right?”

“I know he can be hurt very easily, and that he needs healing and rest more often than his brother, but I don’t understand how or why,” you answer honestly.

“I don’t actually know that either,” Frisk adds. “But...I want to tell you something that no other human can know. And should never know. But you have to promise that you won’t tell anyone, no matter how much you trust them.”

“No,” you sign calmly.

The impassive yet hard expression drains right out of Frisk’s features.

“What?” you think they sign, but the gesture’s not even that specific.

“I don’t promise,” you clarify. “If what you tell me is that important, I’ll do whatever I _should_ do. And if you need a promise like that, you shouldn’t tell me,” you finish. You really don’t know why they look so shocked, but they stare at you that way for a long time.

“I was right to trust you,” they sign eventually.

You shrug, shake your head. You don’t know why you stating the obvious surprises them so much, or why it makes them trust you, but you’re willing to accept they mean it.

“Human souls affect magic, which means they affect monsters. Their bodies,” they add unnecessarily, and your face gets really hot all of a sudden. Wow, this sure is uncomfortable.

“I don’t want to know why you look like that,” Frisk says, also seeming extraordinarily uncomfortable. “so, all I’m going to say is that your intentions matter when humans physically interact with monsters, in a way they don’t with other humans,” and yeah, now you’re definitely purple, and Frisk looks ready for a round of autodefenestration, so they stop talking. Look at the floor with raised eyebrows and huff a sigh.

“Okay. So, not a lot of people know what I can do,” they start again, and after a minute look back at you. Your face is less purple now, so that’s good. And yeah you pretty much figured. “More like almost no one. It’s much better that way. You know because you were affected by it in a way that I couldn’t predict, and that shouldn’t have really been possible. Otherwise, only Sans and Papyrus know.” Frisk uses their name signs: the chest gesture for Papyrus, and a sign that motions like ‘smile’ but has the finger position for ‘bones’ they use sometimes for Sans. His name’s so easy to fingerspell they usually just do that. But something else about what they said seems off otherwise, and you’re not sure why.

“Your mother doesn’t know?” you ask hesitantly, but you don’t really think that’s it. You shift a little, since your hip is bothering you today. If it gets bad, you have meds and a small water bottle with you.

“No,” they sign, face unreadable.

“Anyway,” they continue, “the fact that you were able to...do what you did to yourself, was very...upsetting. For more than the obvious reason. There are ways monsters and humans can affect each other-” they rush that part out, “-that can be dangerous, very dangerous. For a long time I believed there was no way those things could happen by accident, especially if humans didn’t know they were possible. Intentions _matter_ ,” they elaborate again, not looking at you but speaking anyway.

“What happened to you made me realize that I don’t actually know that, because what you did...happened by accident. At least, we had no reason to believe anything was wrong with you, that it could affect you that way...except Sans, maybe. But more importantly, _you_ didn’t know what was wrong with you, you didn’t know anything about souls,” they do cut their eyes at you on this part, “literally _anything_ , and you still did that.”

“Would I have died from that? From-”

_tore yourself apart right there in the dining room_

“-what I did?” you finish shakily.

“I have no idea,” Frisk signs, looking sick. “And Papyrus won’t talk about it.”

You’ve met him. You believe it.

This is why you don’t ask questions so much of the time, even when you probably should. Certainly when _most_ people would. You try not to ask them of yourself when you can help it. Because once you start, you _really can’t stop_. No matter how much you want to.

No matter how much it hurts.

“Why are there so many things only Sans knows? Why are there so many things he can do, that only he can do? Why is he the, the _way_ he is? _How is he possible?_ ” You fire off, hands flicking and slashing.

Frisk holds up their hands, finally stilling yours. They shut their eyes for a long moment, then begin to talk although you’re not sure if they’re answering what you asked.

“The day I came to the underground is the day the barrier was destroyed,” they begin as if they’re choosing their words very, very carefully. “But Sans knows it took much, _much_ longer than that.”

They take a deep breath.

“He also knows the monsters were underground for much longer than...” they sigh, cut off. Close their eyes again. “I was using my ability to create the...” they look very weird for a second. “...best possible outcome,” they flick out quickly, then continue at a normal pace. ASL takes longer than speaking English, but they always manage a fair clip. It’s like they didn’t want you to entirely understand what they were saying.

“Sans was able to become aware of what was happening, because he knows where things are. He has to be thinking about it but he knows. He understands space.”

“Outer space?” you sign, confused as all hell.

“No,” they correct gently, looking like they’re thinking very hard. “s-p-a-c-e-t-i-m-e,” they fingerspell. “My ability creates an anomaly. A...” wow, they might be sweating. “He can’t see time, but he can sort of perceive the space where space...isn’t. That’s time,” Frisk adds, “and when I move it around, he can perceive it to some degree when he thinks about it because they’re not separate. He says, ‘c-o-n-t-i-n-u-u-m.’”

“like a missing tooth,” Sans says as he walks out from behind a column. Frisk can definitely hear him, you can tell, even though they don’t actually look surprised. “not that i’d know anything about what that feels like, right?”

You don’t know why, but _you’re_ not surprised to see him either. He doesn’t seem any particular way, not happy, not sad. He doesn’t look at you, though.

“why did you bring them here?” he continues mildly as he shuffles forward, hands in his pockets.

Frisk turns toward him, and must have said something because Sans is replying.

“might be right. for some reason, i don’t like this place much. wonder why.”

You’re not sure you want to know what Frisk is saying, but you walk around anyways so you can watch them both from the side. They don’t look at you. Only each other.

“Do your job,” Frisk signs simply, and then sits down cross-legged on the floor. Sans approaches them and you see he’s taller than Frisk sitting, but not by as much as you’d think.

“y’know i can’t tell you what you should do,” Sans says in the same casual tone. “can’t even tell ya...well. you know.”

Frisk just waits.

Sans finally moves his eye lights to look at you, and they seem smaller, harder than usual. They go back to Frisk sitting in front of him only a few feet away.

“you sure do like taking away people’s choices, huh?”

“How can I take them away if you don’t make any?” Frisk shoots back this time.

Sans closes his sockets, and to your surprise his hands come out of his pockets to shape words you don’t know, but understand anyways.

“The choice not to choose is a choice. A decision. To _do nothing_ is to also make a decision,” he signs in what he believes might be his native language. It feels like the air pressure is changing, but not the same as an encounter. This is something else. In some ways it almost feels familiar to you, although it’s not affecting you. You don’t know why you know that.

“Knowledge without a vessel does not exist. The vessel shapes the knowledge. Take a moment to think about this.”

His hands freeze in the shape of the last words he spoke, then he becomes preternaturally still, neither moves nor breathes. After several excruciatingly long minutes, Frisk begins to weep silently.

“Now you realize how little it matters,” he continues as if he’d never paused. Then he opens his eyes, puts his hands back into his pockets. He looks a little sad, maybe.

“toldja it wouldn’t help,” he says, shrugging a little but not indifferently. Uncomfortably, maybe. “think a lil smaller next time.”

Frisk’s silence breaks in a tiny sob.

“It helped,” they sign miserably. Sans looks moderately disturbed by this. “I hate you,” they add viscerally, and your heart gives a shocked thud. Sans’s face and posture soften considerably, and his sockets droop. He walks forward and tucks Frisk’s head into his side, presses a bony, mittened hand to the top of their head.

“why don’t we go see your mom.”

He looks at you a little sadly, and when he keeps looking, you turn around.

“be right back,” he adds.

You don’t look back behind you, but instead go toward one of the stained glass windows. You thought you’d be able to see out of them, since some of the panes are longer and clear, but for some reason you can’t. The light looks very mellow, somehow soothing.

You wish you could stop asking so many questions all the time.

Still, when you hear Sans shuffle up behind you and take your hand, you don’t close your eyes.

“How many jobs do you have?” you ask quietly.

He sighs very heavily.

“depends on the day,” he repeats sadly.

You tear your eyes away from the window and look at him, and he meets your eyes. He looks tired. Not as tired as you’ve seen him look before, but still tired. You wonder where your sister is right now.

“don’t ask me stuff like that,” he says very, very quietly.

“Why don’t we go both do something that doesn’t matter the slightest bit for a little while?” you ask instead, and for some baffling reason that makes him look even more tired.

“ _everything_ matters,” he states hollowly, and then his eye lights dart at the window. Their presence and appearance is unaffected by the light shining in through the window, that should shine _into_ his sockets, the inside of his skull, but doesn’t.

“and _anything_ you n me do together matters more than this shit,” he whispers.

You close your eyes.

***

It’s not the movement that wakes you so much as the odd, crackling tones hissing out of Sans’s grin, which seems more like a rictus now that you’ve blinked the blurriness from your eyes. The light from the lamp you always leave on when Sans is here shows you why. He’s not actually moving that much, after all, but rather has curled himself into a very tight and bony ball, and shivering heavily, if intermittently. It looks like he’s trying to shove his fists, which are surprisingly small when collapsed in on themselves a certain way, under his chin and right through the space in his mandible, up against his hard palate.

There’s about a half an inch of space between the top and bottom of his eye sockets, but there’s only darkness in them as far as you can tell. You’re not sure if it’s the sounds he’s making or the weird vibe coming off him, almost cold without actually having a temperature, that reminds you of the night terrors your sister had had for almost two years after your mom had died.

That’s why you don’t touch him, and certainly don’t try and wake him. That can work with nightmares, but not these. That just makes _these_ worse. You watch for a minute trying to gauge if this is a passing thing, or if it’s a full episode. You don’t actually know what happens when someone who is and can do magic has nightmares or sleepwalks, much less this kind of disturbance. Once that occurs to you, you take your phone and head downstairs.

 

You: Sans is having a bad dream

 

You fill a glass of water and take a sip, and that’s how long it is before you feel your phone buzz with the answer you pretty much already know.

 

paps: DON’T WAKE HIM. I WILL BE RIGHT OVER.

 

Yeah. You figured. However, less than three minutes later your door opens despite the fact that you’d certainly locked it. You don’t hear a car.

“MY WIND SPRINTS ARE UNPARALLELED,” Papyrus comments disinterestedly as he power-walks past you and heads up the stairs three at a time with impossibly long legs. You hadn’t asked, but okay.

You go to the couch and lean against the back, staring sightlessly into your dark living room. You don’t hear anything until Papyrus’s light step descending the stairs some time later. When you turn, you see that he’s carrying something that looks suspiciously like the entire comforter, sheets, and duvet from your bed, wadded up into a surprisingly large and dense-seeming bundle. Despite this, he shifts it easily to one arm, takes the remote off your coffee table and sits down on your couch. He moves the bundle to his lap, and he can still see over it despite its size.

Your stay where you are. He leaves the captions on the TV since you have them set by default now.

“Is it dangerous?” you ask a little hesitantly.

Papyrus doesn’t look at you, but tilts his head at the television. “WATCHING TOO MUCH TV CAN BE HARMFUL, YES.”

He stays silent for another five minutes, so you realize you already got as much answer as you’re getting. What had you meant, anyways? Dangerous to you, or to Sans? To Papyrus? To humanity?

Eventually it occurs to you he also might just not know.

“THINKING TOO MUCH CAN ALSO BE HARMFUL. I READ AN ARTICLE ONLINE ABOUT THE EFFECTS OF STRESS ON HUMAN INTERNAL ORGANS, AND IT’S NOT GOOD. THAT’S WHAT IT SAID. ‘NOT GOOD’.”

You sigh.

“Do you need anything?”

“THANK YOU FOR YOUR GRACIOUS QUESTIONS. I DO NOT REQUIRE ANYTHING AT THIS TIME.”

That’s still a bit uncharacteristic for him, but you let it pass. Maybe he’s just feeling extra polite tonight. Papyrus shows no signs of getting up and carrying his brother back home this way, despite you being quite certain he’s capable of doing just that if he chose. Looks like he’s pretty much taking root there. The blanket ball is still, but every once in awhile you hear a tiny noise you can’t quite make out.

“Are you doing healing?” you ask after a minute.

“NO,” he answers after longer.

“Do you need me to, um. Let Frisk know where you are?” you try.

Papyrus’s face is unreadable.

“FRISK IS WITH QUEEN TORIEL. THEY WILL BE THERE FOR TWO MORE WEEKS.”

Oh, dear. You ruminate on that and drink a little more water.

“You’re angry with them.” It’s not a question.

“YOU SHOULDN’T BELIEVE THE HARMFUL STEREOTYPES ABOUT SKELETONS YOU MIGHT SEE IN NON-METTATON-DIRECTED MEDIA. THE ONLY THING THAT MAKES THESE BONES SHAKE WITH RAGE IS SOAKED SOCKS SLOPPILY SHUFFLED INTO MY SPECIALITY SERVIETTES.” He still looks only at the TV as his arms tighten slightly, the lights playing across his matte white, oddly expressionless features.

“I WON’T EVEN TELL YOU WHAT THEY’RE SOAKED WITH, BUT I ASSURE YOU IT’S UNSANITARY. BROTHERS ARE A LOT OF TROUBLE, AFTER ALL. THEY’RE ALWAYS DISAPPEARING OR NAPPING, DISAPPEARING IN ORDER TO BE NAPPING, WRITING DECEPTIVE IF WELL-INTENTIONED NOTES AND LEAVING THEM IN VERY CONVENIENT AREAS, MAKING TERRIBLE JOKES AT THE EXPENSE OF ABSOLUTELY NO ONE, CONSTANTLY EMITTING SLIME, SLACKING OFF AT WORK, OR NAPPING TO PROCRASTINATE SLACKING OFF AT WORK, OR...”

Papyrus’s teeth stay parted for a moment.

“THAT’S JUST WHAT BROTHERS DO.”

You finish your water and go back upstairs, and you see that your bed’s entirely stripped. The fitted sheet and everything.

You go over to your studio-room, where you’d spent the remainder of the shitty day working on your latest painting and Sans had just laid on the bed in there reading comics or whatever. He’d lost music-choosing privileges for a week after the hourlong cartoon splat noises incident, so you just put on some band your sister keeps recommending to you. Both of you had felt indifferently about it. The pillow and blankets are still there, and you grab them and head back downstairs.

You lay down on the couch, near but not touching Papyrus, and gauge him carefully. He’s just watching his programs, of course. You face the tv, and you can read sideways but you’re not really following this anyways. It looks like some kind of art film, and...yep, there’s Mettaton. After ten minutes, you glance back and see that his shoulders are an inch lower than they had been. You sigh, close your eyes, and let yourself drift off.

In the morning Sans is at work when you wake, but Papyrus is here and offering you coffee while insisting that the weather is exactly correct today for shopping for home décor. His car’s here now. The wine-colored bed in a bag set you choose reminds you of the outfit he’d worn when he’d scraped you off your own floor that time, and you tell him that’s why because it’s true. He gets pink, and pays for the set, extra pillows and pillowcases, as well as several not-entirely-practical throw pillows.

You don’t ask what happened to yours.


	17. stop me if you think you've heard this one before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Pearl Jam - Corduroy](https://youtu.be/S73ypK3As8I)

Sans stares into his untouched plate of fries like it’s a final exam. That feels familiar, somehow.

“me n paps used to stay at tori’s,” he says eventually. “lived there. like a family, i guess,” he adds.

You sigh, eat one of his fries. The booth at Grillby’s must be his favorite, since it’s the same one you always sit at, unless it’s at the bar.

“You still are. And I pretty much figured, yeah,” you comment into his silence, and the points in his sockets dart up at you.

_got used to tori’s swear jar, i guess. the kid n’ all._

“I’m not perceptive the way you are,” you add, trying to think about it a little. “Or at least, I doubt it. It works more like...”

_s’just...you look like tori when you make that face._

“Pattern recognition,” you say slowly. “Stuff you say, and _when_ you say it.”

_why don’t we go see your mom._

“And I already said you’re much easier for me to read than humans are. I think that’s just getting more true, probably for obvious reasons.”

He looks thoughtful.

“But I still can’t tell a longing look from a hole in the wall,” you continue wryly. “Maybe it’s really just the fact that you’re literally the _only_ person who calls her that.”

Oops. He looks a little iridescent now. Maybe you’re wrong.

“I’m not bothered about it,” you sigh sympathetically. “And I’m not going to ask you a bunch of questions about why you don’t stay there anymore, or what happened, or...” you pause. “Although I have to say it does make me very intrigued about what’s lurking under the surface. She must _really_ let loose sometimes,” and oops, you just made it worse. Well, you’re trying.

“haven’t really been avoiding you,” he says after a few more minutes, during which you eat more of his fries.

He _has_ , actually, but you’re here with him now and he’s trying to tell you something important.

You’re both trying. It’s nice.

It’s almost time for Frisk to come back home, or ‘home’, or whatever it is. Split household or something, though Frisk’s an adult, not that that even makes a difference even in most human cultures. Hell, if you’re being expansively accurate, Sans actually lives _here_ , too.

You and Sans still talk every day, but he hasn’t been over. He just needed some time and space, and your mouth quirks wry and hard when you think of it that way. You’d learned things from Frisk that Sans probably had wanted either not to tell you, or maybe just to tell you himself. But he hasn’t asked you what they are, or what you think about it.

But it’s not like you ever have to struggle to find things to talk about with him, and it seems to be mutual. You know what his brother’s been up to (another painting, although apparently his sparring partner remains a secret for now), that Frisk is doing fine over at Toriel’s, and that they’ve spoken to each other. You’ve been giving more lectures than usual at work, and it’s making you feel invigorated and worn out at the same time (apparently he can relate to that, who knew). Nattie broke a bone in their foot jumping off a slide and asked you a bunch of questions about bones and Sans, most of which you could answer and several you couldn’t, which was a nice change of pace.

Speaking of which…

“Why don’t we try this,” you say aloud. Grillby goes in the back, and the only other patron here is of course Lola, in her customary spot, doing her customary...customering. It’s early yet, but not too early.

“I’ll tell you what I think is going on, and then you can decide whether or not to tell me if I’m right?”

His face softens considerably at that.

“So, what I think happened...” you’ve had time and space to think about all of this yourself, and to separate out the supreme weirdness of it all into what’s really important. Prioritizing it, maybe.

“...is that Frisk took me to that place to try and strongarm you into doing something you’d already said you wouldn’t a bunch of times.”

_toldja it wouldn’t help._

“You knew Frisk wasn’t going to _hurt_ me or anything, but you came anyways because it pissed you off, and because you didn’t know what they might be...telling me, maybe. I don’t know. Once you got there, Frisk continued to piss you off by invoking an argument you’ve been having for... probably as long as you’ve been part of each other’s lives. You took the bait and provided the other half of that argument, and they got you to do exactly what they wanted by hurting you.”

The plate of fries must be very surprising. Maybe you should stop eating them, since they’re disappearing at an alarming rate as he joins you.

“The most common type of codependent relationship is actually between parents and children,” you continue, and realize this is starting to sound like a lecture. You do you best to soften it. “When you have a bunch of weird, super messed-up secrets and only one other person knows, you rely on them for everything having to do with those secrets sometimes. And because they’re the only other one who really _knows_ , they’re also the only one you can _take it out on_. I think part of the reason you told Frisk you _wouldn’t_ do whatever that was, is because you knew it could probably hurt them. Or they don’t...like it, for some reason.”

You pause.

“You’re not actually some kind of oracle, right?” you ask hesitantly.

He looks up and meets your eyes evenly.

“absofuckinglutely not.”

You nod. “So that’s why it didn’t work, but it freaked you out when Frisk said it _helped_. Because it shouldn’t have done anything, because you don’t...provide information.”

“no,” he says, looking down. It surprises you that he’s providing information now. “only you can ask yourself the questions, and only you can find the answers. even though it’s somethin’ you already knew. justifi _cation_ ain’t-”

He eats another fry, then actually looks up at you again.

“only _you_ know what you did.” He looks to the side. “an’ me, i guess.”

You redirect your thoughts to your current priorities with a little more force than entirely necessary.

“What I wanted to _tell_ you is that I’ve seen a variation of that scene play out in my office more times than I can count. Parents come in with their kids, they have a problem with something, maybe they’re too invested. Maybe it’s just a habit at this point, with them and their kids. They’re adults but they’re still kids. Everyone starts taking the bait, everyone screams ‘i hate you’, and everyone either calms down or storms out.”

You look at the fries, which have stopped disappearing again. They’re stubbornly silent. No answers there.

“But I guess there’s more to it than that, with you and Frisk, because of whatever the hell happened in the underground. I’m not _ask_ ing you anything,” you clarify carefully, “and I don’t need you to tell me if I’m right or not. It’s only an option. But I think maybe you and Frisk got in the habit of hurting each other and that’s the kind that’s hardest to break. I see a lot of trying, but…”

Hmm. “My sister used to get those. Night terrors, or whatever. After our mom died.”

You look up, and his hands are over his open sockets, palms facing you and fingers relaxed. He’s pushed the bones of his palms together somehow so they actually obscure his eye lights.

“this’s exactly what i didn’t want ta happen,” he sighs quietly, and you taste cold.

“That’s the opposite of what I was getting at,” you reply in a small voice.

You think about asking how old he is, and realize that’s an extraordinarily bad idea.

“We both have baggage,” you say instead. “It’s a side effect of existing. This is not a unique situation.”

He’s quiet.

“You’re actually doing a lot better at this than I am,” you mention after another minute.

He takes his hands down, and looks at you in bafflement. You look at his hard, small eye lights.

“So we’re pretending that the overwhelming miasma that is my absolute mortal terror of intimacy isn’t behind us focusing on your problems in a vacuum? As if I didn’t pay you ten times what hot dogs are worth just for having the tact to back off slightly without triggering my fear of abandonment, too? Okay,” you sigh.

His teeth part a little.

“Even the way I’m talking to you right now is a defense mechanism,” you point out.

His teeth close. “you...can stop now,” he says hesitantly, then touches your fingertips on the table similarly.

“Thanks,” you sigh. “I don’t want to be each other’s therapists. I’d like to have a better time than _that_ , at least.”

He exhales softly in something like amusement, and you almost smile. You do hold his hand properly, though, and notice the bones are back to being vaguely separate, table visible through the metacarpals again. You like holding his hand because it’s weird and cool.

“You’re weird and cool,” you say.

“you really think that, huh?” he says quietly. “heh. it’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.”

“No,” you exhale. “It just happened on its own. I don’t get paid for it or anything.”

“gotta have hobbies,” he sighs, some of the tension leaving him. “can i show you something?”

“Here?” you ask.

“my room,” he says, and now you're grinning.

“lemme just take care of this,” he mutters, and shimmies out of the booth. He busses the table himself again, and you wander behind him, watching him clear the plates and stack them neatly in the bin before pushing open the door to the back.

“heya, hot stuff,” he drawls at Grillby, who seems to be slicing up some tomatoes. The elemental leans to set the knife away carefully as Sans approaches, and you take the opportunity to go to the sink and actually wash your hands, which are covered in grease and salt.

You can’t hear his hissing and crackling over the tap, but Sans’s voice cuts through like always.

“yup. you were right.”

He laughs after a minute, and you see your own smile reflected in the stainless steel. You dry off your hands and turn around, just in time for the weirdest thing you think you’ve ever seen, and at this point that’s saying something.

Grillby’s glasses and clothing actually hang in the air while the fire he’s made of shoots into Sans’s left eye socket, then somehow...Sans is _made_ of...or full of? fire...which then shoots back out and into the clothes before they actually go anywhere or hit the floor. It might’ve taken less than a second.

The dishtowel you’re drying your hands with _does_ fall on the floor. You think your eyes might join it.

Sans’s easy, pleasant expression disappears when he turns back to look at you, and his eye lights contract to hard white points.

“uh,” he says eloquently.

A black plume of smoke makes him jump.

“grillby says, ‘force a habit’,” he says after a second. Apparently we’re using full names now.

“says, uh, can he talk to you?” Sans still looks more confused by your reaction than anything else. Also increasingly upset.

You pick up the dishtowel and set it on the counter.

“Um, yeah. Of course,” you add with a little more conviction.

… _It’s a hug._

You shut your mouth yet again.

… _Little skeletons have big mouths that can get them in trouble. Serves him right. I’d offer you one, too, but I’m pretty sure you need those bacteria._

Grillby looks like he’s smiling, despite not actually having facial features.

… _The last human I hugged had diarrhea for a month._

You’re laughing now, too, and you rub your forehead sheepishly.

“Sorry about that, it’s not that I...” you say after a long sigh. “You just scared the shit out of me, I think.”

Grillby turns to Sans

… _I get what you see in them._

and somehow manages to shudder disdainfully. Oh. ‘the shit out of you’. And here you weren’t even trying.

Sans is shaking his head at you in disbelieving pride. Like you’re the sun and he’s ready for fun. You shake your head at yourself a little, too.

“I might have to just start a probiotic yogurt collection,” you shrug.

Sans smiles and walks over, you shut your eyes and when you open them, you’re in his room.

You let go of his hand and lie down on the bed, not too carefully since you’re having a good day. He walks over to a pile and shoves his hand in, pulls out a piece of paper or something.

“Why’d it take you so long to find your shoes that time?” you ask, then wince a little. Well, whatever. Can’t unring _that_ broom, either.

He just shrugs and wanders back, looking at whatever’s in his hand. Photo, maybe.

“how much time _you_ like spending thinking bout where your shoes are?” he comments absently, then sits down next to you.

“I don’t,” you agree and set your chin lightly on his shoulder. It’s padded by the layers he’s wearing, but not enough to comfortably rest your whole weight there. It’s nice. You missed it.

The photo he’s holding has Frisk in the middle, but it’s a big group photo of what looks like the whole family, together. You’re pretty sure that’s Asgore in the back, too. It must have been taken soon after the barrier fell, but for some reason all the faces have been scratched out, except Frisk’s.

“i used to take this out an look at it every day,” he says quietly.

“Um,” you try, and take your chin off his shoulder. Wiggle a little and sit up regular style on your butt. “Why? It’s kind of...” You don’t want to say ‘creepy’.

“frisk did this,” he rumbles.

“Oh,” you say in a small voice.

“they don’t remember anything before us,” he continues quietly. “s’what they say. an I believe em, actually. You seen their, uh...” His finger clicks at his parietal.

“Yeah,” you answer. “They showed me at Grillby’s that time. They implied that’s why they’re deaf, and have trouble with other stuff maybe. I think they also were hinting someone did that to them. They were saying that...they were asking me if I would trust humanity with something as dangerous as their own souls or something, and asking me what they should do. That’s what we were talking about in the chapel thing when you showed up, then it all just sort of went to shit.”

His eye lights flicker and he looks at you.

“in the judgement hall?”

“Is that what it’s called?”

He looks back down and his face closes. “yup,” he answers shortly.

You try so hard. You really, really try.

“Is that what happened to the guy who tried to kill us?”

He’s quiet, and his eye lights are dim.

“Nevermind,” you whisper, and promise yourself again to do your best not to pry into things that might be wounds. It’s just hard.

“he’s sorry,” he says after a minute anyways, and you flush with regret. “lives in some place called ‘florida’ now.”

You suppose that’s punishment enough.

“speakin a which,” he adds a little awkwardly, “sorry bout your...bed stuff.”

“I don’t care about blankets,” you say earnestly. “I care if you’re okay or not. Are you?”

He looks into the distance. “dunno.” He darts his eyes at you, then continues. “s’not dangerous. I just….get...” now he looks like he’s thinking hard. “...sweaty,” he finishes bafflingly.

You’re trying to think of a response to that, but you realize you don’t know very much about what sort of bodily functions he has. He turns his head towards you finally, and although he doesn’t smile it seems like he wants to.

“s’not like, uh, human stuff. it’s all the _same_. whenever i get worked up in any sorta way, i just...” he makes a vague gesture.

You frown. “You leak... magic?”

“heh.” He doesn't look embarrassed or anything, but… “paps thinks it’s gross, but he thinks that about a lotta stuff. grease, socks, clouds, chickens, and...” he trails off. “n even if it is, s’not like i can do anything about it.”

“I don’t think it’s gross. I like it,” you reply. “It’s spicy.”

Oops. Maybe should have left off the last part, because now he looks iridescent. Sheesh. But you suppose the giant wad of blankets (and as you’d discovered, all your pillows as well) makes a little more sense now if Papyrus wanted under no circumstances to take the chance _that_ could touch him.

“Does it evaporate?” you ask. “Wouldn’t it just...dry off?”

He gives you a look. “no? s’not water. not even...waterfall water.”

You think about the smell of oven cleaner. You suppose not, then.

“Does your brother get sweaty, too?”

Now he looks even weirder.

“this has gone in a very unexpected direction,” he mutters, looks back at the photo in his hands. Papyrus is there too, standing proudly with his brother and Frisk, face scratched out along with all the rest.

“Sorry,” you sigh, wincing a little. And here you promised yourself you’d start letting things go instead of shaking every new topic in your teeth like a dog with a rag.

“Were you worried that Frisk would try to hurt you, or...everyone?” You try to take it back to whatever it was about his photo he’s trying to explain to you. “I know the...time...thing. Unhappening. That hurts you too, right?”

He exhales, slow and long.

“i talk a big game bout getting in trouble. but there’s still lotsa stuff i really...can’t tell ya.”

“I always knew that,” you answer, hoping he understands you mean it. You really do.

“nah,” he says quietly, “s’like...it gets me in the habit of not askin _you_ stuff maybe i should.”

You blink, baffled. Then you think about it for a minute.

“You mean, because you have to keep a bunch of secrets, you feel like you can’t...ask me stuff?”

He shrugs one shoulder, then his sockets change shape. He stands up a little abruptly, walks over and shove the photo back in the pile.

“s’enough a that for now.”

He comes back to the bed, sits down facing you and takes your hands in his. He watches his thumbs rub yours.

“you scared of me?”

“Uh...am I supposed to be?” you ask, a little alarmed.

He finally looks up at you, and wow. He’s really upset.

“Hey,” you say softly. “I’m pretty sure you were summoning bones and shit out of thin air like, the second time I ever met you,” you say quietly. “I am aware that magic _does_ things.”

He just looks at you a little desperately.

“I’m also sort of aware that maybe you’re not like other monsters,” you add, squeezing his hands. “It’s not some kind of dealbreaker, if that’s what you’re worried about.” His face doesn’t change. “You really think I’m _scared_ of you?” you add, a little on the high pitched side.

“lotta humans seem to be.” The points in his sockets are tiny and sharp. “s’depressing.”

“I guess it would be,” you reply sympathetically. “But, I just… I know you were having a rough night that time, but you told me I could basically obliterate you with a sucker punch. Are _you_ scared of _me_?”

He looks to the side a little awkwardly, then back.

“might not be uh, exactly _that_ easy, but yeah. i mean, no. ’m not scared of you.”

You exhale. “Frisk felt empowered to reiterate _that_ with me, too. Pretty much everything Frisk told me was stuff you already did, except for the whole, I don’t know. Spatial awareness thing. They tried to tell me something else about monster bodies or something, but I didn’t really get it, and they wanted me to promise stuff I’m not willing to.”

The tops of his sockets lift a little at that.

“I kind of don’t care what it was,” you admit, and his flattened grin might’ve quirked a little. “Remember that stuff I said about not wanting adventures?” you add.

He nods a little sadly.

“I didn’t mean that sort of thing. That’s just family drama, which everyone has, and reactions to previous trauma, which honestly almost everyone also has including me, okay?”

He tilts his head a little at that. “seriously?”

You sigh heavily, squeeze his hands and lie back down. Hold out your arms a little demandingly. He barely hesitates before crawl-flopping over to you and wriggling your bodies together as close as possible. You stick your nose into his nasal cavity for good measure, and he huffs a slightly surprised and amused breath out around it. It makes your eyelashes tickle.

“Wait. Why don’t you smell like fries?” you ask, pulling your nose out and tilting your head back to look at him a little better.

“heh...” he trails off and looks to the side. Ohhh. Burned it off, then. Wowsers.

“Some like it hot,” you grin, but he looks shamefaced and you squeeze him. “I’m just _kidding_ ,” you whisper. “I miss your laugh. I’m sorry.”

“i seriously don’t freak you out?” he whispers, looking awfully vulnerable for some reason.

“ _You_ scare me way less than just, I don’t know. Myself. Being alive. Existing at all in the first place,” you say with utmost sincerity.

“how do you make me believe you? especially when you say stuff like that?” he asks, eye lights fuzzing out.

You set your face against his, stare into his sockets. It soothes you. It’s like his painting. Your chest is touching his and you like it. Your leg’s all up in his business, and his is thrown over you but not in a sexy way. Just so you’re locked together like puzzle pieces. You missed this. It’s lovely.

“You’re the one doing that. The believing,” you reply. “Did I ever tell you how much I like being able to get right against your face and run my mouth at you at the same time? No meat in the way. I’m so fucking spoiled,” you sigh. “Not that I don’t wanna kiss you,” you add, then press your lips to his teeth. They feel warm.

“you gettin fresh with me?”

“Yeah,” you sigh happily. “I’ve been wearing pants for too long today anyways.”

“why you still got em on then?”

“I’d have to let you go to take them off,” you say in a funereal tone.

His warm chuckle almost makes you cry. Wow. You’re soft.

“I’m soft,” you sigh sadly.

You feel his fingers creep up the back of your shirt, rub a little circle between your shoulder blades.

“that a bad thing?” he asks quietly.

You turn your face a little, tuck it under his skull.

“I don’t know why I feel that way,” you say quietly into the pillow. Or, actually. It’s his blanket wad. You’re laying on it like it’s a pillow, though.

“you already told me,” he says in a wondering tone after a minute.

“Huh?” you mumble.

“that you’re scared. it’s okay to be scared of...that stuff. knowin’ people, people knowin’ you.”

You squeeze him a little tighter, and yeah. Now the tears come.

“It’s _not_ , though,” you say thickly, face still hidden. You wiggle it forward more, and he just lays his skull on your head with a sigh. “ _I’m_ not okay with it. It keeps me from...doing things I want to do. Saying things I want to say.”

“but...” his breath does a funny thing, you don’t know what it means. “you...know i’d never try an get you to do anything you didn’t want to, right?” He sounds like he’s confident you _do_ believe that, which makes you feel a little better. You nod so he can feel it. He exhales a little more normally.

“well, you shouldn’t force _yoursel_ f to do anything, either. if it’s not in your nature.” He sounds oddly serious about that. Like he means what you think he does, and also something else. “it’s ok to be...how you are. nothing’s wrong about you. you’re good. a good...person.”

“You’re not the only one who can make problems for themself,” you say quietly.

“Hmm,” he says. Then, to your surprise, he untucks his hand from your shirt, leans up, and starts unbuttoning your jeans.

“Well...thanks?” you say, wiping your eyes and smiling a little as he pulls them off. You have some boxers on under, but you’re finally free. It’s funny how much it makes you actually relax.

He pushes the wad of blankets up against the end of the bed, the one that’s slightly _less_ cattycorner to the wall. The triangle gap is fairly acute at the moment, but it’s still stuffed with...stuff. He shoves the blanket wad over til it’s almost like a chair, then leans back into it, and sort of against the wall. Takes his hoodie off, then holds his arms out. Spindly bones curl in; repeat the motion.

You crawl over, a little confused. He smiles at you encouragingly, then guides you to sit with your back to him, moves you a little until you’re settled so you can lie back against him comfortably. He curls his body in, wraps his arms around your middle, hugs you. Brings his legs in and hugs your legs, too. You shift a little, but he’s surprisingly comfortable. His floating ribs are small and generally mind their own business unless directly addressed. It also helps that the upper one’s actually fused at the end to the rib above it on both sides. You wonder if it has anything to do with his jaw, and if any of his other bones are similarly affected.

“how ya feeling right now?” he asks after a minute.

“Thinking about your bones,” you sigh.

He chuckles a little. “that’s _thinking_ ,” he points out.

You sigh regretfully. You know that.

“I...missed you. A lot.”

“me too,” he rumbles. “occurred to me that every time we get together, we’re bout to explode or something, right? not calm like now. not that it’s a problem, s’just...” he trails off, thinking. He squeezes you, then lets go to stroke your upper arms. It feels good, and you’re happy to be here. It’s nice to just let him hold you, to just... _let_. He trails his fingers down, picks up your hands to play with your fingers.

“remember that time you told me my eyes were like stars?” he says softly. You exhale, smile.

“Yeah.”

“m’ always tryin to think of something to say to you, to make _you_ feel that way. but i’m not good at it. not good at… explaining.”

“But I _do_ feel that way,” you protest mildly.

“hmm,” he says again, but he just plays with your fingers a little more, rubs one of your hands on the back of his. He likes how warm you are. Eventually, he continues.

“y’know when you said that thing bout, uh. ‘thought this is what monsters do?’”

You frown. “Yeah.”

You feel smooth teeth at your neck.

“ _This_ is what monsters do.”

You blink, and think about what he’s saying. _Really_ think about it. Then you do the mental equivalent of picking up the edge of a category you’d spun from your own expectations and experiences at some point, and carry it about five miles east. You do the same thing on the west, all the while receiving gentle squeezes and nuzzles from a very patient skeleton.

“You are a very patient skeleton,” you say.

For some reason, he finds this very amusing and huffs quietly into your neck for a bit. Then he sobers, and his arms tighten around you.

“i was so scared,” he whispers, and something in you breaks.

“scared to feel good. sounds like that shouldn’t make sense, right? but you understand.”

You feel a very intense pang. “Yeah,” you say after a minute.

“so you waited. even when i went to sleep, and you thought i might leave. yeah?”

You incline your head slightly, and you feel him let out a painful-sounding sigh.

“you were right about somethin else, too. didn’t want you to be.”

He wraps his arms around yours, then guides your hands to his sides. Presses your finger lightly at the cloth-covered gap between two ribs under his humerus, then holds your hands in his. Squeezes.

“it woulda been bad if we hadn’t done the way we did.” He seems like he’s going to say something else, but doesn’t. You don’t press. “you knew, and i didn’t. had the best time of my life instead. how’d you know?”

You try and ignore the pang, but it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s just….staying.

“I know you,” you reply, throat tight.

“yeah,” he sighs, and your feel the press of his teeth. His bone thumb rubs your knuckles gently.

“Why am I so scared?” you ask plaintively.

He exhales slowly.

“not me you should be askin,” he breathes against you.

A few slow tears happen, and your breath hitches. He just holds you until it passes.

“Will you help me?” you whisper softly once it does.

“yeah,” he replies. You move his hand to your chest, and he presses lightly, does whatever he does that makes it gather itself. His fingers draw back gracefully, and you exhale slowly instead of making a noise. You lean your head back against his skull a little, and bring your hand up underneath. He shudders a little, squeezes you around the middle. Legs, too.

You know he’s gazing over your shoulder into your deep blue self. It’s interesting how you can see like this, it’s not like anything’s a different color. You can’t lie to yourself, and you can’t lie to him. You both watch it happen, slowly but steadily. You shed a few more tears, and you feel his magic on your neck, deeper than skin. The resonance you always feel when you’re touching him is increasing slowly against your back. It just makes you even more aware of him.

His breath breaks into a quiet sob as your fingers touch the ethereal blue shape in front of you. You coax it forward, look at it.

You can see now why he might have thought you were afraid of _him_ , the way seeing that fear would fit itself into whatever shapes in him seeing fear in others had already created.

And you've looked at it so many times now. Touched yourself; gotten _in_ touch with yourself. You know why you’re this way, and it really is okay. You still know how you feel.

“it’s so strong,” Sans says tightly, and he’s weeping in earnest now. “’m sorry it scared you. scared me, too.”

Fear is not stronger than you. It can’t keep you from doing what you want, and saying what you want to say, because you know yourself. You know what you want and how you feel.

“I want you to know how I feel,” you murmur quietly. “I want you to know me.”

 

 


	18. Confessions From Fort Asshole

A deep, sincere voice impossibly generated without lips, throat or tongue answers you with a question.

“can i touch your soul?”

Instead of breaking the unoccupied hands you'd linked together, you leave your soul on its own for just long enough to find his hard, inhuman fingers and hold them the way he’d held yours before. The fear you’d felt has become an essential and precursory component of something else. Something necessary for you to take this step; something you’d both nurtured and cultivated to get you to this point.

 _Trust_ , you think as you bend his fingers in toward you.

The moment Sans touches your soul is like the infinitely potent distillation of every surprised chuckle you’ve won from him; the indescribable tenderness you’d felt when he sang to Frisk; the gentle, clean joy you’d seen break through existential exhaustion while he watched his brother dance; his unflagging embrace as you screamed your voice to nonexistence in grief; the eager greetings of the friends he’d kept alive through timeless imprisonment by making them feel seen; the endless starlit space in his eyes; his eyes; his eyes.

You move your fingers from the back of his, reach down and just put your hands on his femurs.

Love. Hope. Compassion. You _feel_ him. You want him to know.

You can feel how those things are part of him, inherent to his existence. That doesn’t make what he feels for you any less special. There’s so much more, too, and he gives you that as well. You don’t like thinking about _why_ exactly his fears and faults are so familiar and understood, but you want him to know that you do understand. That it doesn’t frighten you. He soothes you; he always has. His face doesn’t stress you out and his problems don’t break you. He makes you happy in ways you didn’t know you could be, like limbs you’ve been to afraid to stretch, to reach with. But now you’re reaching for him with them, and it feels good.

Time spent with him feels more real, feels fastened into place in a way that can never be unmoored. There are still so many spaces inside you you’d never known existed until he poured into them like warm honey, brimming you with indescribable sweetness until it overflowed from you back into him.

You’d been lonely in ways you’d never even realized.

You want to give him so much of you, give him everything… not only because of what he’d offered you. But because he’d shown you how to receive what he wanted to give you. To accept what he gives you and savor it. Pleasure, comfort, admiration, support….love. He _shows_ you how to let him love you, because his love is so white with hope, so compassionate, so patient and just that it burns away shame and fear.

There’s something about him that just feels right. It works, it fits, it suits. Compatible. That’s what he’d said, but the feeling is much more. He’s not rifling through you like a drawer, looking for something in particular. He’s just letting you show him how you feel. How you feel about him, how he makes you feel.

With his presence inside you, all you have _room_ for is the way he makes you feel. They way you feel when you look at him. How good he makes you feel, and how much...you want him. You want him, your soul wants him, and your body wants him, too. Your _body_.

Sans’s arm tightens a little around your midriff, and he sucks in a shuddering breath.

He knows how this makes you feel. He’s touching you, and you feel him, and he...knows you. Knows what this is.

This is how it feels for you. You want him to know.

His breathing goes ragged suddenly, and you feel his body shake. The light clacking noise his body makes feels like it pushes from his chest through your back and keeps going, and you feel his fingers sink a little further into your soul.

He presses his face into the side of your neck, whispers, “i _can_ feel it. why can i feel it?”

You don’t know, but you hope he likes it. You only want to do things he likes.

“it’s not like mine,” he adds hoarsely. “it...hurts?”

Oh. You freeze, then concern and understanding floods you, washes into him. Maybe it’s time to stop.

“but i...don’t want to?” He pants a little. “or, i _do_ want… something?” _Oh._

It’s the way your body works. When it wants something very badly, it tries to tell you that _not_ giving it that is causing harm. You watch carefully, try and think about what this feeling looks like in your soul. It’s very, very strong, and that can be alarming, but it’s just a little trick your body plays on you; if it bothers him you can always do something else now and save this for later.

“but if you do it...” he says tightly, “it feels _good_ , right?”

It does. Maybe it’s just the _wanting_ that feels bad to him, and you know how to make that part both better and worse at the same time. It’s a lot less gentle and calm than what you’re already doing is, but if he wants to see how it feels, you can show him. And it’s probably better if _you_ show him. You trail your hand down the front of your body, stick your hand down your shorts and touch between your legs a little. So lightly.

Sans shakes like a leaf in the wind. “can you do that some more?”

Of course you can. It simultaneously relieves the wanting and replaces it with twice as much desire. The more you do it, the more you want it. It’s ceaselessly expanding.

You stop for a second, and Sans gasps and flinches. Oh, dear. It still doesn’t hurt, it’s just… wanting. That’s _all_ it is, and you stubbornly let the feeling flood you long enough to turn sweet, lingering and full.

“oh,” he breathes in understanding. You feel very aware of the place he blends into you when he says that. Something sensitive, active. “oh.”

You touch yourself again, and your neck cools a little as he pulls his breath in, sharp and uneven. That’s how it is, the wanting and the relief; the desire and its fulfillment cycling and multiplying.

You stop and start a few more times to show him how it works. Both are actually part of this; maybe that’s why it comes close to pain while also feeling extremely good at the same time. Having him feeling this with you is incredibly exciting, it’s like you’re showing him how to please you, by pleasuring _him_...by pleasuring yourself. You’re starting to feel quite a bit of tension building as you circle your fingers rhythmically, and it’s almost as if you can feel something more where he touches you, and it’s-

“wait a sec,” he says suddenly after what feels like a long time. He’s not not abrupt or corrective, he just needs to say something important. It’s always easy for you to wait for him.

He breathes heavily for about a minute before whispering, “’m having some trouble. not, uh… with...”

He breathes a little more, tries to steady himself. “if what i think is gonna happen, happens,” he’s choosing his words carefully, you can feel it, “dunno if i can...control myself. we might hafta stop, okay?”

You don’t know what he can’t control, but you understand. The feelings you’re used to are often overwhelming and difficult to control. Delicate concern floods you, for some reason heightening your arousal even further. You didn’t mean for it to, but it does. You want to be _so careful_ with him. Only what he likes, nothing he doesn’t. You want to give him _everything_.

His face grinds into your neck, and he gives a ragged moan before cutting himself off. “ _please_ ,” he whispers tightly, but you don’t know what he’s begging for as his bones tingle further into your essential self. More? Stop? Maybe he doesn’t know, either, but you let him find his balance. Then he can decide what he wants to happen. You can stop anytime, and so can he.

You feel the now-familiar sensation of magic on your neck. You stay still, wait for him to try and soothe himself. You want him to feel safe and happy. Cared for, the way he always cares for you.

“i know,” he whispers. “i _know_ you. i know.”

He repeats his soft whisper for a long time.

“the thing i do when i’m touching my soul,” he manages eventually. Oh, you know what he means. The thing he does when he’s ready, pushing his magic into himself. The thing he likes so much.

“if we...uh. if we keep doing this. think that might happen no matter what. i don’t know why.” He pants, trying to calm himself. “in _you_ , though,” he says quietly, slowly. “here.”

His fingers are buried in you, the vague but steady resonance suffusing everything you are. A spectrum of complicated feelings happen to you, each one a different shade of yearning. You shake with it, and he groans into your neck pleadingly. You’ve heard the noise he makes when he does that, and you can guess at the implications. So far guessing’s _all_ you’ve done, but it must be very good. That’s not in doubt.

“i feel _so_ good.” A tight-whispered sob. “you won’t _believe_ it.”

That wasn’t a statement about how he feels right now.

It’s a promise that rocks you to your core.

“but you gotta know something, okay? it’s not-” He needs to catch his breath again. “not the same as right now. it’s...magic. it’s _me_.” He groans softer, then whispers so his breath ghosts into your ear along with his voice.

“part of my _body_ , okay? not just _this_ ,” and you feel additionally aware of his soul touching yours through them. “it’s… physical. an’ it lasts a _while_ ,” he admits breathlessly. “few days, sometimes.”

Wow. _Oh._ Yeah, that must really be something. Everything he says just makes you want it more. You’re already so open, you feel him so much.

“but ‘m not sure, because...” he trails off, something in his nonexistent throat clicking.

“do you like how _this_ feels?” he asks hesitantly instead, as if he doesn’t know already how he feels, buried like this in everything you are. You think about it, and yes. You really, truly do. He makes you feel good, and you’ve had parts of his body inside you before. You always like the way he does it. You like the way his soul feels, his body feels. You like the way his magic feels, and the way it tastes. You want it.

“hmmmm,” he breathes, his voice barely in it. “not sure bout it because... i’ve never done it before,” he admits, almost inaudible.

He’s never done this to anyone but himself, then. It’s okay, and that doesn’t have to change now. You can always stop. Nothing wrong with that, same as how he never had anyone else do that to him, either. You don’t know _why_ of course, but-

“i’m selfish,” he interrupts, voice just above the point of being unadorned breathing. It’s the closest to shame you’ve ever heard him, and it’s still not. A little regretful, maybe. “kept it to myself. didn’t feel like i could-” his voice disappears, but you still hear the regret drop away before it does. He wasn’t sure he _wanted_ anyone to know exactly how good he feels, and since he was unsure, he doesn’t regret not doing it.

“but you make me… you… you gave me...” his breathing is heavy again. “i want you to have it, okay? if you want this. but you have to say so. i know it’s hard to talk but i can’t just-”

Oh dear, he hasn’t been listening?

You feel his head move away from your neck a little to see where you’ve been signing “Yes” over and over, maybe without knowing it at first but it’s been happening since he started talking. And now, yes. He’s listening. Yes.

Does he want what you can give him, too? Is he listening?

“i want it,” he whispers almost harshly as he pushes his face back into your shoulder. “wanna _know_ you,” he murmurs, softer, dreamlike as he caresses your soul. He exhales tight, almost a whine. “want you to feel me.”

The hand you’ve been using to sign with creeps up past your shoulder now, reaches up and back to touch his skull gently. You resume the motions of your other hand, still buried in the heat between your legs, and listen to him gasp sharply. Oh, it’s going to happen _soon_. The conversational interlude had done the opposite of putting a damper on things, and you hope he’s ready. It’s not as gentle an experience as the ones he’s used to. It’s very sudden and a little rough this way. In fact, you move your hand away from his skull to make sure you won’t flail or grab him.

He’s panting against you in anticipation, both his own and yours apparently. His legs come in closer, not pushing at you but supporting your position, curling in toward you, mirroring your tension. A new experience for both of you after all; not too much adventure but something yet unmapped; a gift to give each other at the same time. It’s gonna happen.

“ _please,_ ” he groans, his voice breaking open against you to pour out ragged desire. “i… i _need_ it.”

He pants, sounding almost afraid. You know how it feels. You _know_. It’s okay, that’s how it’s supposed to feel. How it always feels. He won’t die, and it won’t _hurt_ , but he might almost feel like it. He’s not alone, he’s right here with you and he’s safe. This feeling is yours but he can borrow it for a little while.

Just like looking at the spaces between stars, or when you touch _his_ soul. It’s a lot.

But he can’t get hurt just from feeling that way. And that’s the unmapped territory, you realize. Not unfamiliar, not at all. You’re just visiting each other from the inside. It’s safe, and you’ll give him what he wants; what you _both_ want.

You want him...to _know_ _you_.

He does.

Magic flows down your neck, a familiar and soothing part of him. You swipe your hand up against it suddenly as he makes a short, shocked cry at the cessation, then a longer one as the tingle of his own magic joins the friction and pressure of what you’re already doing. You hear a strangled grunt and feel the overlapped edge of his upper teeth push against the top of your shoulder. It doesn’t hurt. It feels _very good_ in fact, and he drags them along a little because he can feel what it’s doing. It’s making the next part extremely inevitable.

You feel a promise about to make good where his fingers blend into your soul. It’s been happening underneath the other, louder part for some time already without you noticing, but you realize suddenly that it’s so much...bigger. Broader, and it encompasses the whole. A bright, citrus point of excitement and joy bursts in you knowing what you both want so much is almost here, and then just as suddenly, it _is_.

You can hear a hoarse, devastated scream happening into your upper back, and you feel his teeth again at the nearly unbearable pinnacle.

But much more immediate for you is the ocean of absolute certainty that has flooded you with an unshakeable peace like _nothing_ you’ve ever known in your life.

_**E v e r y t h i n g is going to be o k a y.** _

Your climax rips through you both, and a tiny bit of the infinite wave coursing through you ends up sliding into him too somehow, and that’s perfectly fine, exactly the way it should be. The sound that slips from you is all-encompassing, so assured, and so very, very soft.

You are _existentially_ satisfied.

Your head rolls back against his shoulder, and you feel your eyes widen rather than clenching shut like you’re used to. His phalanges touch your chest and spread until they’re flat against you as your soul slips right inside. The ocean of peace floods you all over again, pushing the air out of your lungs gently, bringing you safely and perfectly back together. You both sort of just tip sideways in unison like synchronized fainting goats, and you feel every bit of it, including his nose or teeth or something hitting the point of your shoulder a little awkwardly and it’s just..lovely.

It’s perfect, and so is he, and so are you.

It’s not a distancing feeling; it’s not insulating or suppressing anything. You don’t feel confused at all. You know exactly where you are, and it’s exactly where you _want_ to be. Where you _should_ be. You can feel the deeper-than-skin sensitivity of his magic between your legs still, but it’s nothing to how it feels in your soul.

It doesn’t even _tingle_ there, just makes you feel like you simultaneously ate all of your favorite foods at once, made everyone who’s ever met you proud, saved the world, lined up about ten thousand bars of perfectly cut soap then knocked them down like dominoes into a fibonacci spiral, fell in love with everyone on earth at once, all while having the best orgasm of your life... except somehow also not in a sexual way. Not in any way you’re used to, at least.

There’s also the fact that it’s… still happening.

“You really weren’t kidding, huh,” you say softly. Your breathing’s already steadying.

“you either,” a breathlessly hoarse chuckle emerges from Sans as he pulls his face away from the back of your neck. Then he freezes.

“um,” he whispers, sounding alarmed, and you feel a rush of soft concern. The peaceful feeling doesn’t stop other feelings from happening; in fact, they’re more present to you in a way because you’re so okay with it. It’s easy to accept. You feel his finger lightly touch a spot on your back.

“Am I bleeding?” you ask softly, recognizing the pain. “It’s okay if I am, that happens sometimes. It’ll heal.”

He’s very quiet and still.

You roll onto your back, hiding whatever tiny almost-wound might’ve been collateral damage from the most amazing experience of your life. He’s staring at his fingers, and he does look unnerved. You can’t even see anything on them, but maybe that’s not the point.

“I understand why it upsets you,” you say quietly, then take his hand in yours. “But you _felt_ it, remember?”

He doesn’t look at you.

“Remember that time I hit you with my teeth by accident?”

He doesn’t look happy, but his lighted sockets flick just a second to meet your eyes.

“this wasn’t an _accident_.” It’s a hollow whisper.

“I asked you if it hurt,” you continue. “You said it’d be hard to hurt you that way, but I know you just meant it didn’t injure you. That’s not the same as saying it didn’t hurt.”

He still doesn't reply, but his expression changes slightly. You caress his fingers, then hold your arm out to invite him to lay with you. After a few seconds, he sighs and puts his head on your shoulder. He doesn’t relax much.

“My body’s soft, but it can take a lot of damage,” you muse, considering. “I can’t help the softness. Any more than you can help being...brittle, maybe? I don’t know how it works, and you don’t have to explain it.”

You breathe in contentment, but it still doesn’t interfere with the concern for him. He’s definitely had an experience he doesn’t entirely understand, just like you did. And are apparently still having, and will continue to for some unspecified amount of time. This is very okay with you.

“The way it is for me is just _rougher_. I can’t help it; that’s how my body works. I know it feels like you can’t...think very well, like you almost forget who you are. It’s a lot.” You think for a long minute.

“Is something else about it bothering you?”

Weirdly enough, you feel him relax a little at that.

“yeah,” he admits after a second. “somethin’ else. long time ago, i guess.”

Your curl your arm around and rest your hand on his skull the way he likes. He relaxes a little more.

“I’m fine if you ever want to talk about it, or if you don’t. But I just want you to know that if you don’t want that to happen again, it _won’t_.” You think for a second. “I can even do things to make sure you won’t even feel like it _could_ ,” you add enigmatically. “But if you didn’t like it, or you don’t like it now, it’s okay if you don’t want to do that again. Any part of it, or the whole thing.”

He breathes quietly for a few minutes.

“one time someone wanted me to do something like that to em, i guess. i didn’t; they got... mad. so i left,” he explains shortly. He’s silent for a long time, but the tension in his body isn’t getting worse. It might even be ebbing. “i don’t like blood,” he whispers, and gets quiet again for a bit before continuing.

“seeing that just now, feeling upset about it, but then… remembering how it _felt_. made me feel like somethin’ was wrong with me, maybe. like maybe i had fun and you didn’t, or it…” he rasps hollowly. “scared me, i guess.”

One more exhale and he relaxes the rest of the way.

You rub your cheek against his forehead, press your hand to the back of his skull.

“think a lotta people misunderstood that paper,” he says after another, sweeter while. “toldja m’not good at explaining. I wasn’t saying all humans are selfish. more like... all that stuff i did made me feel like _i’m_ selfish. or made me _realize_ i am. still not sure i guess.”

After a minute, you smile.

“You might be the least selfish person I’ve ever met.”

He just laughs wordlessly, quiet but sincere.

“Nothing we just did was selfish,” you continue. “It was...” you don’t have words anymore. You try again. “I’ve never felt that good in my life. Even right now, I don’t...I can’t even describe this. I don’t know how you ever do _anything else_. Ever. Literally ever. I’d do this five times an hour. I’d starve.”

He’s laughing more now. Good.

“i know what you mean,” he finishes, then exhales expansively. “dunno if that’s something i’d wanna do all the time,” and you realize he’s still talking about what you’d just done together, but what it had been like for _him_.

“you were right,” he says, a little edge in his voice. “felt like i was gonna die. it was...sharper than i thought. but i didn’t die, and...i’m safe. right on that, too. but nothing i ever did before came close to being that much at once. _all at once._ i dunno.” he exhales in amusement. “but i get a lil antsy in a good way thinking about it even right now, so maybe...yeah. maybe.” He smiles at you gently. “gotta think soft on it.”

“I can relate,” you admit quietly. “I’m not sure I’m ever going to stop feeling this good.”

He huffs ambiguously. “well, i gotta confess that you got a lot, uh... more than usual,” he says in a very small voice, and now he sounds like he’s smothering a noise.

“Oh, word?” you drawl insouciantly.

“heh _hee_ _h_ ,” he chokes out weakly, and you feel an explosion of joy at hearing a laugh variation you never even _guessed_ he had in him.

“you got it all, and all i got on my mind is that bag of chisps I know’s between the mattress and the wall right there,” he giggles obscenely. “was there six months ago at least.” His voice shrinks again. “stars _above._ never pushed that hard in m’life,” he adds in a strangled whisper. Good lord. He’s _embarrassed_.

‘m a husk,” he half-whispers, half-wheezes. “ya _husked_ me, darlin’,” he confides to your armpit, shoulders hunched and quivering.

“I _told_ you so.”

“what?” he honks.

“That you’re _corny_ ,” you grunt, lunging down to rummage in the space between the wall and the bed as he yelps even harder with his weird giggles. All sorts of interesting stuff in there, but...huh.

You pull out a familiar bottle and brandish it, then touch it to his arm lightly.

“How about this?”

He lifts his head, and his eye lights actually dilate when he sees the full, sealed ketchup bottle.

“there you go absolutely comin’ for my life like that and savin’ it at the same time,” he says, cap already wrestled open. He guzzles it like it really _is_ going to save his life, head thrown back, sockets shut and everything. Well, based on how you feel right now and what he said, you can get where he’s coming from. Serves him right for all his ‘you hungry yet’ jokes, but you’re glad it seems to be helping. Maybe his bad moment earlier was worsened by an extreme case of hangry.

The look on his face as he finishes his snack and flips the bottle back over his shoulder, spinning and flashing end over end impressively, might just be the loveliest sight of your life. Then you hear a strange noise coming from the corner where it landed. You cut your eyes at him, wondering if it might be a problem. Rather than looking worried, his eyes light up like fireworks.

“guess that’s the last straw,” he breathes, sounding almost awed. Instead of getting up, diving for cover, or providing you with written or verbal instructions, he just turns around and sticks his bony ass in your hip. Then he pulls your hand around until you turn over on your side, and pulls your arm up and _through_ him the way he likes.

“there it goes...” he sighs in quiet wonder, and you see past his shoulder to where what looks like some kind of dust devil is starting to twirl, picking up bits of nasty shit from all over his room. Dirty socks, the catalytic ketchup bottle, paper and metal bits and god-knows-what. Dog hair. A Ritz cracker. A sheet of paper, looks like it’s from a kid’s coloring book.

“What the fuck is _that_ about?” you sigh contentedly, smiling as he presses your hand to his warm teeth, drags them across carefully. No edges now, just smoothness.

“dunno,” he says, humming and rubbing your skin against his face. “usually happens on good days, though. we can just watch it a while, it can’t-” he cuts off, suddenly springing up and grabbing the wadded blanket at the foot of the bed, pulling it over you both and tucking it under and around. He folds both your bodies back precisely as they had been meticulously, this time improved by blanket armor.

“case it comes over here, we can just get underneath and pin it down. boom. blanket fort.”

“I christen this encampment… Fort Asshole,” you giggle.

There’s a piece of something, looks like a clay figurine? Wonder where he got that from. A little bag of marbles, ten jacks and a ball. A folder you’re pretty sure belongs to his brother, since it says PAPYRUS on it in rhinestones. Ten wrappers from those strawberry candies old ladies always have in their purse. Pack of cigarettes. A rubber bracelet shaped like a dick when it isn’t stretched around a wrist. Ten peeled grapes and a candle, ten more socks. None of them match. A jar-thing of glitter, and-oh, oops. Looks like the glitter’s lid isn’t tornado-proof. Things just got sparkly up in this bitch.

“i love you,” he sighs after a few minutes.

Three empty theater-style boxes of junior mints… no, wait. The junior mints are flying around in there, too.

You squeeze him a little with your upper arm as he continues to rub your weird, hot skin on his bony face, his smooth, glassy teeth. He grunts a laugh, wiggles and clacks as the back of your index finger tickles over the top of his iliac crest.

“I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ now slam that motherfucking play button on the boombox because if you can't indulge yourself, how in the hell you gonna indulge somebody else](https://youtu.be/NSkboTTTmpg)


	19. he didn't say

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Sam Cooke - You Send Me](https://youtu.be/mrwfB4aAZZc)

You’d been absolutely right about Toriel. She _does_ get sloppy, especially after her eighth glass of wine.

She also feels like a huge, fluffy body pillow and makes you believe you’re an okay dancer. That’s how you know you’re three sheets to the wind too. Not eight, maybe, but three’s plenty for you.

“No, no,” she murmurs as she leans forward to dip you gently. “I said I would not tell you that story. He made me promise, you know. He is a _terrible_ goblin, is he not?”

Sans looks even funnier when you’re upside down too, ass up and face down (sort of) over the back of the couch. You can see about two inches of spine between the waistband of his shorts and where his shirt and hoodie have started to slip down, but looks like it’s caught in his ribcage somewhere, preventing further exposure. Another layer of directional hilarity is added because his chin’s actually on the couch part where the ass is supposed to go, so you can see the stupefied grin as his snore manages to cut through whatever tinkly music is happening.

“Slattern,” you sigh, then Toriel pulls you back up, making your head swim a little. It’s not unpleasant.

“Whee,” you add, grinning madly, then you frown a little in concern. “Maybe I shouldn’t have doubled up,” you mutter. You’d taken it to heart that monster alcohol can’t affect your body, and you’d had to take some of your stronger meds to balance out what the cold and six inches of snow outside’s doing to your joints. But it’s nice and toasty in here, with however many pies in the oven and however many logs on the fire. Nice and toasty in your twirly-ass soul, too.

Toriel cups your face in one of her enormous, furry hands and looks deep into your eyes with her rectangular pupils.

“Ah. Let me see,” she murmurs, and you feel a resonance of magic before she continues. “You are in no danger. Worry not.”

“Has anyone ever told you... you’re a GILF?” you sigh, enamored.

She cuts her eyes significantly at the couch, and you roar with laughter. That’s apparently enough of a disturbance to get him to slide the rest of the way off the back of the couch into an untidy pile with a chorus of clacks before resuming his dry, rattling snore. You and Toriel roar with laughter in unison this time.

“Did I ever tell you about the time Sans made me accidentally steal a pair of bowling shoes?” you chuckle. The story of the bowling alley "fight" has her chortling and hiccuping until she has to wipe a tear away, but you leave out the part about the broom and leave in the part where you’d returned them once you realized.

The instrumental flute and hurdygurdy ends, and a song that sounds familiar begins.

_I want a little sugar in my bowl…_

_I want a little sweetness_

_Down in my soul…._

“Is this Frisk’s playlist?” you blink up at her wonderingly. “I think...Sans was singing this song a long time ago.”

“I don’t doubt it,” she replies in her musical voice. “It is very like them to choose the music and then leave the room,” she adds fondly.

Another explosion of green light paints the sheer white curtains between the darker, heavier ones to the sides. Frisk, MK, Papyrus, Alphys and Undyne are all going absolutely apeshit in the snow outside, and have been for a while now. It’s late. Papyrus and Undyne have been “sparring” on and off, and you can hear Alphys’s throaty giggles cutting through the music every once in a while. Maybe they’re playing shoe chicken again.

The group had divided naturally into those inclined to roughhouse and those very much not, although MK and Frisk have been moving between inside and outside for most of the day. The entryway carpet’s a little wet, but there are slippers and house shoes lined up next to the boot tray in front of the spacious sitting room.

The room itself has been transformed into the site of a rather spectacular slumber party, with thick pads rolled out and covered with pillows and blankets. You’d spent the previous night there with everyone and slept well, although your joints had complained a little in the morning. Toriel had added an additional pad to your pallet after that, filled with some kind of tiny beads or pellets that she promised would ease your rest just in case it had been the floor, rather than the cold. You’re not too worried about it, since you’re having a fucking blast.

“I wish my sister would move up here,” you sigh as you and Toriel stagger gracefully around the kitchen, then through towards the sitting room. Your arms are up around her shoulders, and her hands grip your waist firmly. “She’d seriously _love_ this. The pies, the music...the thing with the, uh. Tree.”

It’s your second day staying here at Toriel’s for some sort of four-day monster holiday called gyftmas. For some reason it isn’t capitalized. It had been held underground regularly, based on various factors contingent on a closed system that no longer exists. Asgore and Toriel had consulted various experts and non-experts in order to determine dates and circumstances for holidays, including this one, for surface purposes.

Almost all of them involve giving each other gifts, cooking large amounts of food, and having extended sleepovers with friends and family for up to a week. This one is apparently just the last four days of the year, and you’d been invited. _Very_ invited, individually, by almost everyone here including Sans. Maybe they just wanted to make certain you felt welcome, or maybe they’re just really bad at communicating that sort of thing to each other.

“Ah, yes,” Toriel smiles vaguely. “Your sister’s family. She has two children?”

“Yeah,” you blink happily. “Cute as hell. Shonda and Nattie. They’re uh. Shonda’s ten and Nattie’s seven. They never stop asking me questions. Think I know _everything_ , it’s too cute. I keep telling em I don’t, and I can never figure out why I know all the answers. Can’t I just be _wrong_ , sometimes?” you whine up at her, and she laughs softly.

You step on her foot again, glance down. The slippers you're wearing over your fuzzy socks out of respect for their modesty customs make it a little harder not to step on her bare white feet. Well, she doesn’t seem to mind it, so you won’t either.

“Children are a wonderful gift,” Toriel muses as she guides you aimlessly around the warm, delicious-smelling kitchen, holding one of your hands and extending your arm out. “I must admit, this year has been a bit difficult for me since Frisk has decided to become an adult.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, my apologies. You are unfamiliar with gyftmas. Today is for children to receive their presents. We will exchange ours tomorrow. This is the first year that Frisk has decided they are an adult, and so that leaves no one in the household to receive gifts on the children’s day.” She sighs, and seems a little sadder than the circumstances might call for, but then again, eight glasses might do that.

“Papyrus offered to be a child this gyftmas, you know. To cheer me up.” She grins at the lights outside again, since you've wandered far enough into the hall for them to be visible once more. “I told him he’s far too tall and handsome to pull double gyftmas duty, but it was still a very kind gesture.”

“Did you know Papyrus when he was a kid?” You try to imagine that, and it’s actually kind of difficult.

She blinks down at you. “No. I did not meet Papyrus until the barrier was broken.”

“Huh,” you say. “Is that when you met Sans, too?”

She exhales slowly, smiles.

“Yes and no.” She looks lost in thought. “You are aware that… Asgore and myself have not been on the friendliest of terms for quite some time, yes? Even before the barrier fell.”

You nod.

“I lived apart from most other monsters underground for a long time. Not completely alone, but it was... lonely. I had important duties and I could not leave where I was. But there was...a door. It was locked, however.” Her expression is very soft. “Sans and I told jokes and stories to each other through that door for a long time, but did not meet until the barrier was broken.”

_Darling, youuuu send me_

_Darling, youuuu send me_

_Honest ya do, honest ya do..._

It sounds incredibly romantic to you. And after having heard a smorgasbord of Toriel’s...’jokes’, earlier, you really wonder why it didn’t work out between them. None of their interactions even hinted at acrimony; quite the opposite in fact. They speak easily and casually to each other. When dinner had neared completion Sans had been darting around the kitchen with her in a syncopated rhythm- Sans ducking into cupboards for serving dishes, Toriel getting things off high shelves and handing them down.

Toriel, gesturing expansively with her ever-full wineglass, had started telling stories about everyone during dinner, including some embarrassing ones. She threw a roll at Undyne for cussing while cussing at her (Undyne caught it in her teeth and made short work of it), then told another story about Papyrus and limes that almost made you pee yourself. Toriel’s thorough roasting may have been what led the roughhousers to return outside despite the late hour. Sans had decided to take an especially entertaining nap on the couch rather than roughhousing _or_ conversing. He’d apparently been working more than usual before the beginning of the festivities, and although they haven’t been exactly strenuous he’s taken as many opportunities as possible to catch some Z’s.

“Sans hides many things behind a smile,” Toriel muses into your contemplative silence. “Himself most of all.”

“Well, he can’t really help the smiling part,” you sigh as she dips you again. “But I think I get what you mean.”

You wince a little as she brings you back up, and Toriel stands a moment rather than continuing.

“Are you sure you will not accept healing?”

“I’m fine,” you demur as you had when the morning had dawned with you in pain. “I’ve got my meds.”

She exhales in mild frustration, glances at the couch again.

“You two have much in common,” she smiles a little wryly, although it’s hard with such a fluffy face. “And I am glad to see him so happy. Shall we sit and wait for the pies to finish?”

“Sounds good to me,” you reply, blushing a little. You blink contentedly even though you’re feeling pretty worn out as you both head to the couch. There’s just enough room between Toriel at the end and Sans’s sleepy skull for your butt, and you look around admiring some of the arrangements that Papyrus had brought from his job at the florist as you sit. They’re very flamboyant, although their red and green vibrancy has been managed tastefully without using too many dyed plants. He really has a knack for putting stuff together, regardless of medium.

You and Toriel continue to shoot the shit pleasantly for a while before a sudden cessation in the hubbub outside makes you both go still in concern. You notice the sudden absence of Sans’s snore as you listen, although you probably can gain more information from watching Toriel.

A thin sob that sounds like it might be Frisk reaches your ears. Toriel tenses and seem about to leap to her feet when the door is opened by Papyrus. He’s wearing a knee-length gyftmas sweater and red snow boots tall enough that their tops are somewhere under the hem, carrying a silently weeping Frisk in from the snow.

“FRISK FELL OUT OF THE TREE,” he sighs regretfully. “I’VE TAKEN CARE OF IT, BUT...”

Toriel nods sadly.

“Frisk does not cope well with injuries,” she adds to you softly. “They become...unusually agitated.”

You assume they mean the gyftmas tree, which is left outside and decorated, unlike human holidays with similar customs where the tree is cut and brought inside. Monsters prefer to let the tree live its life, and also throw it a sort of...party to apologize for decorating it? Well, you’re not 100% on the details but it’s something like that. Even the gifts are waterproofed and left outside.

Toriel gets to her feet and goes to Frisk, brushes their hair back from their forehead as she removes their coat and boots. She murmurs softly, too quietly for you to hear. Papyrus goes to one of the pallets with pillows and blankets that cover nearly the entire floor of the room, and lays Frisk down on it. As he gently covers them Toriel goes to the couch and scoops up Sans, who doesn’t seem to actually wake although he mumbles a little. She puts him down on the wide padded area next to Frisk.

Papyrus comes to sit on the couch cushion formerly occupied by the Sans-pile.

“I THINK FRISK’S DONE FOR THE NIGHT. BUT I COULD USE SOME PIE?”

Papyrus clasps his hands between his knees and looks up at Toriel adoringly.

Toriel smiles softly and nods. “I believe the fire magic has done its work, and the pies will be ready at any moment now. I will attend to that, and you have my thanks for attending to Frisk.”

Papyrus glows, and you pat his shoulder in agreement.

Eventually Frisk’s sobs slow and disappear. Alphys and Undyne come in after a few minutes and join you.

“MK says th-they’ll be back t-tomorrow,” Alphys comments quietly, and even Undyne seems slightly subdued as she goes and ruffles Frisk’s hair fondly. They don’t respond, but they don’t seem bothered by it, either. Both of them settle on another section of the couch with a satisfied sigh.

“How did the sparring go otherwise?” you ask as Alphys finds a blanket to pull over her and her wife as they settle into the couch and each other. They’re wearing festive sweaters too, with designs you’re not entirely sure of because Undyne had apparently made these herself. The sweaters look like what you’d imagine after finding out yesterday that she plays piano with equal enthusiasm. Although the stitches look like they may have been dropped fairly regularly, they’re mostly managing to be held together with hot-glued ribbons and some tastefully embroidered appliqués.

“I WON THE SPARRING, BUT UNDYNE WON THE SNOW-CHUCKING CONTEST FOR THE FOURTH TIME IN A ROW,” Papyrus informs you, seeming mildly put out by the latter.

“Hey! You won the snow shaping, and Frisk beat us _both_ at Dog,” Undyne gripes, still grinning.

Papyrus sighs and glances over to the now-quiet mound where Frisk recovers from their ordeal.

“IT’S TRUE. WE HAVE NEVER MANAGED TO DEFEAT FRISK AT DOG. BUT AS LONG AS WE NEVER GIVE UP, IT’S SURE TO HAPPEN SOMEDAY.” He nods with utter conviction.

“What’s dog?” you ask.

“Dog,” Undyne corrects. “It’s capitalized.”

“Oh, uh. Sorry. What’s Dog?”

“That’s where you see who can p-p-et Lesser D-dog up the highest,” Alphys answers.

You open your mouth with further inquiries, but before you can ask a sleepy rumble sounds from underneath a blanket on the floor.

“that anything like updog?”

“SANS, _YOU_ DEFEATED FRISK AT DOG ONCE, YOU _KNOW_ WHAT IT’S LIKE." Papyrus scowls. "WHAT’S UPDOG?”

“not much bro, what’s up with you?”

Papyrus puts his face into his gloved hands and seems to add another defeat to his overall score. You pat his shoulder again consolingly, and the Sans-pile on the floor resumes snoring. Luckily Toriel returns with pie before he can feel to sorry for himself, along plates and utensils on a tray held carefully in her massive hands.

“It is snail pie, I hope that is all right with everyone?” She doesn’t glance at you, but you get the feeling the disclaimer might’ve been added for your benefit.

“I’d love to try some,” you say, and you mean it.

It’s nothing like what you had expected; rather than being savory it’s actually sweet and spiced. There are tiny bits of some kind of fruit, no big chunks of anything in particular, and the texture’s actually kind of great.

“This is like...mincemeat pie,” you say wonderingly.

Toriel smiles. “Well, I suppose snails do count as ‘meat’...”

“Huh. Yeah, I guess they do,” you grin back. “It’s really good.”

You clean your plate and have seconds, then go upstairs to brush your teeth since your eyes have started listing shut on their own unless you concentrate on keeping them open. You change into sleepwear, and by the time you head back downstairs it looks like everyone else is finally settling in for the night, too. You eyeball the floor and spy the special pallet Toriel had set up for you, a few feet away from where Frisk and Sans are. Looks like a skeletal arm is thrown over Frisk’s now-slumbering form. At least it seems they’ve managed to calm down and get some rest. Toriel takes the space on the other side of Frisk, and Alphys and Undyne are bedded down near the coffee table.

Even with Frisk’s accident casting a bit of a pall on the evening, it’s been a really great day. You fall asleep almost as soon as your head hits the pillow.

***

Unfortunately, your eyes open in the middle of the night, and you definitely have to get up and use the bathroom again. Afterwards you’re feeling more awake than you’d like, and rather than tossing and turning and waking up everyone else, you decide to go to the kitchen and prepare a cup of the herbal tea you’d taken a liking to. Toriel usually offers it when you come over here; she’s told you it’s made from some kind of flower and doesn't have any caffeine.

As you lean your ass against the counter while you wait for the kettle to boil, a shape materializes at the entrance to the kitchen, startling you a little. After a moment, you gesture a greeting at Alphys.

“Can’t sleep?” she signs back, and you make an ambiguous motion with your hand, shrug. “I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, too,” Alphys confides. You nod and indicate that you relate.

“I think I just need a cup of tea or something, and I’ll be able to get back to it,” you smile. “You want some?”

“Sure,” she replies, and leans against the counter with you. “Are you having fun?”

You nod emphatically. “I think the slumber party aspect is really cool,” you muse. “I mean, it’s not like I don’t have family sleepovers from time to time, but it’s interesting to have it be an official part of the proceedings.”

You ask her about Undyne’s sweaters while the water boils, but once you get settled at the table with steaming cups, Alphys turns thoughtful, almost speculative. You both listen to the heavy breathing and dry snores from the other room for a few minutes silently, but you can tell Alphys wants to lay something heavy on you. So much for sleep, maybe.

“Frisk had planned to tell you something before they got hurt earlier tonight,” she begins. “They’ve decided they want humans to get more access to monster information. Soul basics, scans, history, that sort of thing.”

You raise your eyebrows in surprise. “Really? Huh.” You look into you cup, take a sip. “They asked me for advice about it, but I don’t know if I ever actually gave them any. Maybe in the end they felt like they could decide on their own.”

“Frisk actually said they want _you_ to look it over first, see what you think. They’ve...” Alphys looks to the side a little. “They’ve already authorized me to release the information to you, in fact.” She sighs heavily.

“I think maybe you’ve guessed that I don’t like the amount of secrecy we’ve had to maintain since the barrier fell,” she signs slowly. She looks back at you with something a little more intense in her eyes than you’re used to seeing there, all the more noticeable considering it’s the middle of the night over tea. “No one knows better than I do that too much knowledge can cause a lot of damage, and that having only a _little_ knowledge can cause even more. But...” Her face firms. “I’ve read some of your work on pedagogy and ethics-” wow, okay that’s pretty flattering, “-and that’s why I’m including certain...histories,” she signs almost reluctantly. “I think that they’ll provide context you’ll need into order to give an accurate opinion on how these materials might affect...things,” she finishes.

You shake your head. “I don’t understand why Frisk sees _me_ in this role,” you protest. “I’m not sure if it’s because I was the person they met with first at the University...or, maybe it’s because Sans and I are close, and he’s one of their parents? Maybe they see me as adjacent, somehow?”

Alphys’s lips quirk ironically. “I’m sure Frisk would be overjoyed if Sans actually weighed in with his opinion on literally _any_ of the decisions that need to be made. Almost all of the arguments they have end up being about Sans refusing to…” Alphys trails off; maybe it’s none of her business, or just none of yours. “Well, anyways, I don’t know how someone can be that laidback and so stubborn at the same time. Frisk gets frustrated, and I can relate. It’s not like I don’t have to fight tooth and nail just to get his consultations when I need them. This past week I’ve felt almost spoiled.” She rolls her eyes.

You tilt your head and make a questioning motion.

She grins a little. “Why am I surprised he didn’t tell you about that? I shouldn’t be by now, but I can tell...how he feels about you,” she adds, blushing a little. She really is awfully prurient. “But then again, one doesn’t have much to do with the other. Basically, I have Sans come in whenever I need something that can't possibly work to work _anyway_. I don’t have any illusions about him sticking around to actually see it through, but if I need a solution _now_ , he’s my secret weapon.”

You think about that for a minute.

“I’m guessing the solution comes written on a bar coaster?” you gesture, quirking your eyebrow.

Alphys muffles a laugh. “Well, at least once a napkin came into play, but not for writing on. That plugged a leak that could have turned Mt Ebott into a lifeless crater, and I still don’t understand why it didn’t. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not as down on myself as I used to be. I know that he can’t do what I do.”

Alphys’s face grows earnest. “But there are still things only _he_ can do, which is why we don’t ask him to if we can help it.”

That sentence wouldn’t make a lot of sense if you didn’t know Sans. But you do, so you nod and set your tea down.

“If Frisk thinks I could function as some kind of backdoor access to advice from Sans on policy, they’re sorely mistaken. Still, it just seems odd to trust me with something like that,” you muse. “They barely know me.” You stop at the expression on her face.

“It’s been nearly a year now, hasn’t it?” she points out.

You stare at the table. You suppose...it has, now that you think about it. You look back at her, astounded.

Alphys’s eyelids droop and her gaze grows distant.

“This family has so many secrets,” she signs regretfully. “It’s not fair to any of us, but I….I’m still glad Frisk decided to get your input on all of this. I can tell they’ve been struggling.”

You press your lips together.

“Why on earth is Frisk responsible for these decisions in the first place? They said they’ve been doing that since they were eight or nine. How can someone so young handle that?”

Alphys sighs heavily. “You can’t know how dire things had become underground, and how few choices we were left with. I think that after you have a chance to learn a little more about why things were the way they were, you’ll have some insight into why things _are_ they way they are. Keep in mind...it was Frisk’s actions and decisions that freed us in the end.”

You exhale, unconvinced but unwilling to argue the point.

“I’ll help them if I can, but I can’t really promise anything,” you sign after a long minute.

For some reason, that makes her gaze thoughtfully at the wall that blocks her view of the sitting room.

“Fair enough,” she gestures after a minute, then drains her teacup. “I’m going to try and get a little more sleep. We can’t all be Papyrus, after all.” She smiles gently.

You sit and let your tea get cold. Every so often when there’s a gap in his brother’s snoring, you can hear him digging around in the snow outside.

***

The next day when you and Sans walk out to the tree with everyone, you watch even more tiredness fall away from his expression when he sees the snow structures Papyrus has created overnight. You’re impressed too; you’ve never seen a _gazebo_ made out of snow before.

You all stand around for a few minutes expectantly, since you've been told Asgore himself will be showing up for at least a few minutes, although you aren’t technically going to “meet” him, since he’s going to be dressed as Santa and therefore... _is_ Santa. Toriel looks mildly resigned, but otherwise seems in a good enough mood. Frisk’s been subdued all morning, and you don’t think you’ve really seen them speak to anyone. But their expression brightens when you hear a quietly booming laugh, and an enormous red and white shape comes through the rest of the trees onto the house grounds.

Asgore is massive.

You, Sans, and Toriel hang back a bit as the rest rush forward, and Frisk gets lifted up directly onto a brightly-clad shoulder. Your eyebrows lift a little, considering Frisk is rather tall and broad and is still getting carried like a kid. They’re certainly grinning an awful lot for someone who decided to be an adult just this year, but you’re never too old for fun.

You look down at Sans and share a slow, happy smile.

“heh,” he comments quietly. “he’s beefy enough to make anyone feel like a kid again.”

“Does he really go to _everyone’s_ house?” you ask in wonder.

Sans grins as Frisk is carried over to the tree, then given a bag to distribute its contents underneath. “nah. that’s probably impossible. but he makes everyone _feel_ like he did. probably why he’s king.” Sans shrugs, then holds out a mittened hand. “ready to meet santa?”

“Sure,” you grin back, and you join the rest over by the tree. Sans peels off and joins his brother as you approach the massive Santa, Frisk still on his shoulder.

“Good to meet you, Santa,” you speak and sign politely. He has the same golden, square-pupiled eyes as Toriel, and honestly they look a lot alike.

“You as well,” he replies in a voice that sounds like it could be heard on the moon, but somehow still isn’t _loud_. Huh.

Sans’s surprised chuckle makes you glance over your shoulder, and you see that Papyrus’s enthusiasm has gotten the better of him. He lifts his brother onto his shoulder to gallop over to his snow gazebo, apparently unwilling to wait for his slow, shuffling gait. Now it looks like he’s explaining something to him about the roof, pointing things out with his red-gloved phalanges. At least Sans can see it from Papyrus's height instea dof just getting it explained to him, although you suspect he'd be just as happy with either.

“Sorry,” you say, turning back to Santa and Frisk.

“The brothers have been very good this year,” Santa replies with what you think is a smile under the big, fake white beard. “Their happiness is shared with us all.”

You suppose that’s true enough.

The exchange of gifts isn’t very formal, which makes sense since you’d been told they shouldn’t be expensive or large. You’d been given a pillowcase to put your waterproofed packages into, so you mill around with everyone else under the tree finding ones with your name on them and just shove them in. There's no indication other than the name of the recipient on the packages. Well, except for the stickers on the ones that are apparently from Santa, who has managed to depart at some point without you noticing.

Everyone wanders back into the house to open their gifts, and although you’re not really supposed to know who they’re from, you kind of do. Most of the ones for you are actually just small bags of G to spend at monster shops, including the one from Santa. The set of detailing brushes is most likely from Papyrus, and you think the small, hand-thrown teacup with a dark blue glaze might be from Sans. You look over at him, and notice the little rubber star charms you’d gotten him for the ends of his hood drawstrings have already been applied. They’re not much, just meant to keep the ends from sliding into the cloth and getting lost, but you blush anyways. They look cute.

You wander over from where you’d been opening packages on the pallet, and sit down next to Sans on the couch, touch your shoulder lightly to his. He’s smiling, but still looks tired.

“Long week at work, huh?” you say softly, and he closes his eyes for a minute, shakes his head.

“yup,” he sighs. “i’d say alphie runnin’ her mouth at me makes it longer, but ta be honest I don’t mind it.” He glances over at you, eye lights darting apologetically.

“I didn’t ask, remember?” you point out.

He nods a little sadly. You watch Frisk for a few minutes, noticing they seem to go back to their subdued mood from this morning now that Santa has departed.

“If Frisk going to be okay?” You ask. “They seem weird since they got hurt last night.”

Sans sighs again. “kid takes it hard, an they got their reasons for that. i figure i don’t have to spell it out, but...yeah. might be a lil cagey for a bit, but they’ll be okay.”

You nod. If Frisk has been abused in the past, even if they don’t remember it, they might just have additional emotional issues that make injuries a little harder to recover from beyond the physical. And since they’re related to several notable monster healers, Toriel and Papyrus at least, their physical recoveries are almost instantaneous. Maybe the emotional recovery that would usually accompany the physical one is just exaggerated because of the circumstances.

“alphie spill any more beans while she was at it?” he asks after the rest stand and start to clean up. None of them ask you or Sans to help, which you suppose makes sense when you think about it but still makes you feel vaguely guilty. You try to let it go, and discover not being the only one sitting here while everyone else exerts themselves is surprisingly heartening. It really is nice to have a fatigue buddy.

“Apparently Frisk needs my advice again,” you reply quietly. “This time they want me to go over some...information, and give my opinion on...teaching and ethics? I don’t know. It’s not entirely clear, but I guess I’ll just have to do my best.”

He doesn’t look happy about it. You lean back, present your upturned hand between your hip and his. His hand emerges from his pocket bare-boned and takes yours.

“Is this one of the things you can’t talk about, or just the ones you wish I didn’t know?”

You and he sit quietly for a long time, watching everyone bustle around, blinking from time to time. That’s a habit you and he have gotten in to as you grow more used to each other; long, comfortable silences while you think, enjoy each other’s company, and rest. Neither of you are in a hurry, and you have every reason to want to be careful with each other. Toriel begins to prepare a meal, and Papyrus loudly announces he’s going to help, but that he must also retrieve several items from home first. Frisk slips out after him, and the engine of the cherry red car parked out front starts and buzzes away, audible even over the clatter from the kitchen.

Alphys and Undyne come in briefly, shaking and folding the blankets you’ve been using and replacing one Sans managed to get breakfast all over, then smile at you both and head to the dining room. They start having a loud, fake argument about anime, and every once in a while Toriel chimes in with a surprisingly astute addition, if what you're hearing is accurate. She really is a very complex monster, isn’t she.

Eventually, Sans answers you.

“more like...wish you didn’t keep getting dragged into this. not really sure why frisk wants you involved, or...hell, i wish _i_ wasn’t involved.” His eyes return to you. “ya know you don’t _have_ to, right?”

“I do,” you answer evenly. “But I won’t know what the right thing to do is unless I look, or… I don’t know. I guess I just feel like I should try, at least.” You press your lips together. “I just wish that I didn’t feel like more is hanging on this than should be, if you...get what I mean?” You sigh. “I wish _I_ knew what I mean,” you grumble.

“we got almost as many wishes up here as we used to have back underground,” he says, sounding bittersweet. He meets your eyes and his expression softens. “least we got real stars to wish on now.” He tugs at one of his drawstring charms with his unoccupied hand and winks at you.

You grin back, then remember something you wanted to ask him about. “So, you told me the gifts here aren’t supposed to be a big deal, right? I was wondering...when do you think a good time would be for me to give Papyrus his portrait?”

You’ve been working on it the past month or two, inspired in turn by his incredible painting. You have it up in your studio room rather than the main areas, because for some reason it still strikes you as somehow...private. You’d learned the one in the dining room at the skeleton household is actually _just_ Papyrus, and that makes it a lot less surprising that it’s in a public area rather than a bedroom. You’ve met him, after all.

Sans has already seen the portrait, since a lot of the time when you’re painting in your studio room, he’s curled up napping or reading something on the bed. One time you think he might have been writing something, because he just kept tapping at his monster phone with his index phalanx and frowning. As for the painting, he hasn’t given an opinion on it or anything and you haven’t asked, but you can tell by the way he looks at it that he really likes it. When you’d mentioned you planned to give his brother a portrait of himself, he’d grinned and said, “sounds perfect.”

“huh,” he says after a minute or two. “actually...why not do it right now?” He smiles over at you, looking like he’s perked up a little. “feelin’ up to it?”

“Yeah, actually,” you say, starting to grin yourself. “He went over to your place, right? He’s probably still there. We can go to my apartment and grab it real quick?”

He inclines his head, then you both stand with twin groans and share a giggle about it. Your hands are still joined, and you shut your eyes as you walk together toward a downstairs bedroom. You’re not sure if he actually uses the threshold or not, but it takes you out of the view of everyone in the dining room, and you feel the lurch that’s almost becoming familiar at this point.

You open your eyes in your spare room, and take the small portrait off the dresser where it’s been sitting since you finished it. He nods, you shut your eyes again and this time open them in his kitchen.

Papyrus has his head buried in the fridge, and you hear nonspecific rummaging. Several cupboards have been left open, and various items litter the countertops. You wonder if it’s part of a system he's got going on, or if he just got sidetracked again. You’ve noticed that happens with him, sometimes.

“hey, bro,” Sans says, “you got a minute?”

Papyrus doesn’t seem startled by suddenly hearing his brother’s voice, and answers, “YES, I SUPPOSE,” distractedly into the fridge as he continues rummaging. Now you know it’s not actually cold inside, and isn’t actually plugged in since it doesn’t contain anything but monster food, which doesn't spoil. It makes sense, since neither brother can actually eat non-magic food items anyway, but it’s still vaguely disturbing for some reason. Papyrus had mentioned at least once that the fridge at Alphys and Undyne’s house actually keeps food hot, but you still haven’t been over there yet. You hope to at some point, and not only because you want to see the famous painting that hangs there.

Eventually Papyrus realizes more is not forthcoming, and his head pops up over the door of the fridge with a peevish expression, teeth parted as he inhales. Then he sees you, and his expression shifts.

“OH, HELLO. DID YOU FORGET SOMETHING HERE AS WELL? YOU COULD HAVE SENT A TEXT, I-”

You take your hand from behind you back and hold out the painting to him without further ado, and he cuts himself off.

“I figured I’d get art revenge on you,” you say with a giggle. Sans puts his arm around your waist and holds your other hand folded over your middle as you both watch Papyrus’s expression soften quietly.

You’d asked Sans for the photo you’d worked from, a candid shot of him sparring with Undyne a while back. It’s actually a view from behind his shoulder, with his arm flung out as a wave of bones tears across the background behind his red-gloved fingers. Although the view is almost completely from behind, you can just make out the shape of his sockets and the position of his jaw enough to infer a joyous expression. His scarf flutters in the breeze dramatically.

“A WORTHY TRIBUTE,” he says after a surprisingly long time. Ho goes to the counter and sets it up against the wall, propped up so he can see it as he backs away. “I’LL PUT IT IN MY ROOM WHEN WE GET BACK HOME.” But instead of opening the fridge again, he just stands a few feet away from the painting and tilts his head at it.

“I REMEMBER THAT DAY,” he says wonderingly. “UNDYNE WON.”

Sans grins fondly. “you decided what you’re makin’ yet, bro?” he prompts gently.

Papyrus straightens suddenly from where he’s started leaning over to squint at the painting again.

“YES, OF COURSE! I WAS JUST...GETTING THE EGGS!” he replies, doing an about face to yank the fridge back open.

“was thinkin’ we could ride back with you,” Sans adds after a few minutes of watching his brother rummaging and repeatedly getting distracted by the painting. “i’m feeling lazy.”

“AND WHEN HAVE YOU EVER FELT ANYTHING ELSE?” Papyrus replies without rancor, pulling open a cupboard to push things aside on the top shelf.

Sans shrugs, which you feel since his arm’s still wrapped around you. “you gonna be much longer? cause if you are, i’m sittin down,” he sighs.

Papyrus scowls down at him.

“I’M NEARLY FINISHED, SANS. DON’T BE DRAMATIC.”

Sans sighs, leaving the irony unacknowledged. “you might be right. i’d just have to get up again, wouldn’t i? that’s twice the work.”

Papyrus starts shoving things into a bag, leaving the eggs for last and setting them carefully on top.

He gives the painting one last look, checks the bag, and nods.

“OKAY, LET’S GO. I MIGHT ACTUALLY HAVE TO GO THE SPEED LIMIT TO GET THIS IN THE OVEN ON TIME,” he hollers wistfully as he turns toward the front door.

Sans shifts as if to follow, still holding on to you, but you stop in confusion. He glances at you questioningly.

“Is Frisk staying here, then?” you ask, and Papyrus turns back.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” he says, tilting his head in bafflement.

“Didn’t...” you frown. No, you’re sure. “Frisk came over here with you, right?”

Papyrus just looks at you.

“...NO?” he answers, starting to frown. Sans is looking at you too, now.

“I saw them go out the front door right after you did,” you say slowly. “I heard the car start, and I just assumed they wanted to go back with you. They're _really_ not here?” You look down at Sans, confused, and he looks back at you closely, inhales slowly.

“that kid,” he sighs, shaking his head, “i’m gonna hafta-”

Sans cuts off, and his eye lights go out like a snuffed candle.

His arm tightens around you reflexively, and the dissonant tones and crackling hiss of the language only he and his brother speak emerges from his suddenly flat grin.

Papyrus replies, and you watch as suddenly

 

reality

 

unravels.

 

 


	20. green thumb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I really want to thank everyone who's stuck with me so far.  
> also, holy shit thank you commenters! That dopamine spike's just...*mwuh* seriously. you're all so fucken awesome. anyhoo
> 
> here comes the uh oh.
> 
> [suicidal ideation, unhealthy coping mechanisms, possible body horror]
> 
> [Radiohead - There There (The Boney King of Nowhere)](https://youtu.be/7AQSLozK7aA)

And just as suddenly, reality spins itself back out of absolute nothingness and there’s a bony hand over your mouth shoving your scream back inside, finger and thumb pinching your nose shut. Just before you panic, another bony hand appears in front of your face, spelling almost more quickly than you can follow.

“ _quiet_ ,” they flick silently. “f-l-o-w-e-y is small but he’s dangerous. stay still.”

The hand removes itself while also pulling your mouth open, so the near-panicked breath you take is as quiet as possible.

You and Sans are in a _tree_ , and the arm of the hand he’d kept your scream in with is wrapped back around your waist, this time holding you steady despite the creaking, swaying evergreen branches around you. It’s _freezing_ , and while you have your heavy sweater on, it’s not doing much to cut the wind at this height. You turn your head to look at Sans. His eye lights still haven’t returned, but you can tell he’s looking daggers at something far below on the ground anyway.

Turns out it’s Frisk, kneeling in their big, puffy coat. The hood isn’t up, and from this angle, you can see what they’re saying, and you look around but you don’t actually see anyone.

“I still wish you would,” they’re saying, and their face looks….heartbroken.

They appear to be addressing a seasonally unlikely golden flower in the half-frozen ground in front of them, and when it moves, you jump despite Sans’s arm tightening around you again. Now you can see the flower has a _face_.

What.

Flowey, then. That must be the ...flower.

Flowey looks at Frisk with an old expression on his jarringly childlike features, and you barely manage not to jump again when he speaks.

“Maybe I’d rather just go be with wherever the rest of me is. I don’t know if that’s possible, but...” He trails off. “Maybe I’m wrong, and it’s just a bunch of nothing. And if so, I’m okay with that, too. Why can’t you be? Maybe it’s just that time has been mostly able to move forward for this long. Being able to move around up _here_ made me realize that I don’t have to cling to all this. I’ve been so determined to walk this path for so long and I don’t know why, but maybe there can be other paths. I don’t have to be stuck. Like this.”

Frisk shakes their head adamantly, silently.

“Have you considered that maybe I don’t want to go back to the way I was? Maybe I don’t want to ‘go back’ at all. I want to go _forward_ , Chara. I want to move on.”

“Don’t call me that!” Frisk signs sharply. “How can you give up? Can’t you give me more time?”

“Frisk, then.” Flowey tilts his face at the ground, petals obscuring his features for a moment. When he looks back up, his expression is still impassive, but that very indifference is also intensified.

“When did you become so determined to save everyone? The fifth time? The five hundredth time? Well... it doesn’t matter.”

Flowey looks to the side. “I’ve _had_ time, Frisk. For a thousand lifetimes, I’ve had nothing _but_ time. Now, I know I can’t _actually_ want anything, but I think if I could...I’d want something else, finally. I’ve had enough of _time_.”

The yellow flower tilts his face up, looking at the sky.

“It goes a lot farther than I ever realized. Sometimes I think...” He looks back at Frisk. “Remember the human souls? They _went_ somewhere. They’re not gone. Well, they _are_ gone, but they went somewhere else. I watched it happen when they left me. Maybe I want to find out. It’s interesting to feel like I might want something.”

The flower laughs a little, an empty sound. “That’s just an idea, though. I don’t actually feel anything.”

Frisk is shaking their head again. “If you had a soul, you’d want more time. You’d want to see everyone again. I’m sure of it!”

“I _do_ see them. Almost every day. You should be proud, you know that? You really did save everyone. Even Asgore is happy. The humans...well. They are what they are, but they’re a lot better off than they could have been otherwise. The balance is being struck. Why not just ride this out and see where it takes you? This is the best one I can remember seeing.”

Frisk scrubs their hands through their hair madly, then brings their hands back in front of them.

“If the humans know more, learn more, I think that maybe they can figure out...something. A way to give it back to you. Or at least...maybe they can _make_ you one? Five thousand people can know something a lot _more_ than five can. The vessel shapes the knowledge.” You feel a terrible chill. “The brothers, maybe they can...” Frisk trails off.

Flowey lets the silence hang before speaking into it.

“Before you came along, I couldn’t die. You know that, right? I think I told you at least once. I tried, but it didn’t work. I just woke up back in the same spot, over and over. Chara wouldn’t let me. They refused.”

The flower looks at Frisk with the same indifference.

“They still won’t. But maybe _you_ will.”

“I hate it when you talk like this,” Frisk says, eyes glittering with unshed tears.

Flowey sighs.

“One more time,” he says after a while. “I’ll let you try once more, but then you have to stop. I’m tired, Chara.”

Frisk gives a short, toneless shriek, slices the air with their hands. “I’m NOT Chara!”

Flowey gazes back impassively.

“Of course you are. We _both_ are. Otherwise, none of this would have happened.”

Flowey just watches Frisk weep in silence for a while, then sighs again.

“I’m going now,” he says mildly. “I’d rather not have to say this all over again, so don’t come back until Papyrus does. And...”

The face of the uncanny flower tilts up, keeps on going until he looks into the branches of the tree you’re both sitting in. His face… drips, and Sans’s blank eye sockets get impossibly darker.

“ **If we’re really friends… you won’t come back.”**

Sans’s hand tightens on your arm, and you slam your eyes shut. Before you even have a chance to see if Frisk saw you too, you’re both in Sans’s bedroom.

Sans’s eye lights start to come back, but he stumbles heavily over to his bed and sits down soundlessly. You can’t hear him breathe. Then his hands come up, and he slowly reaches for his face, fingers rasping at his orbitals. They don’t stop there, and you watch as he slowly pushes his phalanges right into his large, catlike eye sockets, almost to the carpals. You hear a faint click after a moment. Another about 30 seconds later. A faint rasp, a tap.

“Sans?” you say, voice shaking. “Does that...hurt you?”

“jus’...need a break. gimme a minute,” he whispers thickly after an uncomfortably long time.

You approach the mattress on the floor slowly, then manage to ease yourself down next to him with a faint wince. Then you scoot back until your back is against the wall, so you don’t have to hold yourself upright anymore. It’s a relief. You’re not sure if what he’s doing hurts or not, but you’re sure you don’t want to watch it.

It takes a long time.

He sighs, and his fingers finally rasp back out of his sockets. He takes another deep breath before turning to look over his shoulder at you.

“didn’t mean to bring you. but… there wasn’t time. sorry.”

“I...gathered that,” you whisper hoarsely.

His face is blank.

“i know that’s not easy ta look at. but...”

He walks over to his garbage-coated desk, falls clumsily and hard onto the chair that probably once had a back. His hand rummages in his pocket furiously for a second, then reemerges. He looks down at the floor, not at you. His eye lights are back, at least. Small and hard. Thinking.

He looks over at you, then shuts his sockets deliberately.

“this doesn’t do nothin’.” he says shortly.

“Huh?” you have no idea what he’s talking about.

“i can still see.”

You frown, wondering what the hell...oh.

“You can still see me?” you reply, a little less unnerved for some reason.

“nope.” he says after a long time, sockets still sealed.

“just other stuff,” he elaborates after even longer. Then he opens his eyes, the lights appearing again.

He’s leaned forward, elbows on his femurs. He bends his wrists a little, drawing your attention to his fingers.

“but if i just...” he flicks his phalanges very slightly, then after a moment flicks them again. “they don’t work anymore. for...a little bit. few minutes. seconds. an hour. hard to say.” He flicks once more. One of his hands comes up, but only rubs across his forehead lightly.

“Oh,” you reply simply, remembering the last time you’d apparently seen him doing that. The night of Papyrus’s art party. His hands coming up into his hood, the rasping noises you’d heard coming out of it. The care he’d taken to make sure his face and hands were hidden. It really _isn’t_ easy to look at. Apparently you’d fallen asleep that night before him after all. Or maybe he had just fallen asleep with his hands….huh.

“What about when you sleep?”

He just looks at you questioningly.

“When you sleep,” you repeat. “Do your...eyes work when you sleep? You close your sockets, so...”

He sighs, sounding indescribably exhausted.

“maybe we don’t sleep the same,” he says after a minute. Then he glances up, eyes sharpening. “you _do_ see stuff when you’re sleeping, though. i’ve seen it.”

You blink, a little alarmed. “You can see my dreams?”

He looks even more confused. “nah, it’s like...” He moves his hands in front of his sockets, points out his index fingers then darts them around rapidly.

You laugh a little, but it sounds rusty and bad so you stop.

“That’s REM sleep. Rapid eye movement. It’s...” you think a second. “Human eyes move around when you have dreams, because your body’s reacting to them. Even though nothing’s actually happening to you, you _feel_ like it is and your eyes respond to what they think they see. Some people sleepwalk, but most people’s bodies paralyze them while they sleep. So they can’t hurt themselves. But your eyes...they just...” you trail off, because he’s got a weird look on his face.

“just stuff that’s not really happening, huh?”

“Sometimes I dream about stuff that really happened,” you say darkly. “I’m...not a fan.”

“maybe we do sleep the same then,” he whispers. “what about...stuff that might happen? unhappened? stuff that _will_ happen, maybe? you ever wonder if...” he looks sick.

“I try not to think about it,” you croak honestly.

“you got the right idea bout that,” he agrees, shuddering. You watch some unreadable expression cross his face, then settle into his bones. A decision.

“wanna make you somethin’,” he rumbles, then pulls out one of the drawers in his desk. You didn’t even know it had drawers, but they must just be hard to find if you don’t know where they are already.

Of all possible things that could be in there, what he ends up pulling out is an old, encrusted, mass-produced looking key. It’s ochre-yellowish, seems stained. Sans’s hand darts into the pile on the desktop, and when it comes back out it’s holding an extremely clean and gleaming razor blade. He makes no effort to hide what he’s doing from you, so you just keep on sitting there and watch him...

Working.

It’s a very interesting thing to see him do.

He looks like he’s meticulously scraping something off the outside of the key, although you can’t for the life of you imagine what. The yellowish patina seems to slowly loosen, however, and as time goes on it starts to gleam under his meticulous scraping. The tiny motions would seem furious if they weren’t so preternaturally precise in every possible way. Nothing seems to fall away under his etching, there’s no dust as the key shines brighter and brighter. At one point, he stops to stick the blade between his teeth, and you wince as you hear a sharp crack. His head lifts, and without removing his gaze from the key, huff-spits a piece of the blade back into the mess on his desk, then keeps on scraping with a fresh edge.

Once the key is so silvery it seems like it’s giving off its own source of light, you see him do something quickly with the blade you can’t quite see, rub his thumb against his own hand, then the key itself. He tosses the blade back into the desk mess without looking, and keeps rubbing the key until it looks...smooth? It definitely doesn’t look etched or scratched. You have no clue why he finally looks satisfied, but once he does, he looks over at you and almost smiles. He doesn’t, but almost. You wonder what your face looks like to him right now.

His eyes go back to the key, now held between the index finger and thumb of his right hand. His sockets become almost perfectly round, and then you gasp as his left hand darts over the key, the finger and thumb of that hand precisely angled over it. His eye lights flicker a moment as if he’s making an adjustment you can’t actually _see_ happening, then you gasp again as his angled fingers draw back and up to the right, almost as if a widening window is appearing.

Because when he begins, a ring of green light appears in the socket of his left eye.

When his wrist flicks and slowly draws back the other direction, thumb at a slightly different angle this time, you start to realize the light in his eye _isn’t green at all_.

That’s just what you _see_.

Something about the key is changing too, a kind of sympathetic noise you’d almost call flashing, if it wasn’t too fast for you to actually perceive. Since you can’t you have no clue how you _know_ that, but it’s like the way fluorescent bulbs give you a headache, even when you can’t _see_ that they’re flashing. It _is_ like a...noise. One you can’t actually hear.

Each key, endless keys, all existing in the same spot at the same time, which is right now. Each millisecond flash in his eye, a key. Each sweep, countless keys. Every last key pinched between his bony fingers.

The fifteenth time his hand changes shape, you can see beads of his magic start to form on the surface of his skull. He doesn’t stop though. The forty-fourth time, and he’s starting to breathe a little heavily. In the end, he makes it to fifty before finally dropping his hand, and his head hangs a little as he catches his breath.

“nice round number, i figure,” he gasps at you after a little bit, without looking up. “f-i-g-u-r-e,” his fingers click weakly.

“How many keys did you _make_?” you rasp instead of laughing.

He holds the key loosely, almost carelessly, in his right hand. With his left he wads the sleeve of his sweater around his fingers, then wipes his head with one long, also careless-seeming swipe. Shrugs.

“y’know exponents?”

You nod cautiously.

“ten to the, what. tenth? hundredth? however many zeroes ya want.”

“How many _keys_ did you _make_?” you choke out.

He’s too worn out to laugh.

"jus’ one. followed by writing zeroes until you get tired."

Your mouth falls open as the way he speaks, like he’s quoting something, rings a very unwelcome bell.

“That’s a _googleplex_ , Sans.”

He shrugs indifferently. “not even close, but might be enough this time. ya never know.”

“How are you able to do this?” you whisper hoarsely.

He looks at you, broken, for a long time.

“i don’t know,” he croaks hollowly.

You take a few short, panting breaths.

“Where did...you _come_ from? Why…?”

“ _i don’t know_.”

He sounds like his soul is cracked wide open, and nothing’s pouring out but sand.

Too much time, too long in the _same_ time.

Too much time to count, even for him.

He knows exactly how many keys are in his hand.

“You and your brother,” you rasp. “...What _are_ you?”

“i...i don’t _know_.”

He’s telling the truth.

You _know he is_ , so why do you keep asking? You can’t stop.

“Why don’t you know?”

His eye lights are gone, the grooves under his sockets echoing their hollowness.

“ **i** **forgot** **.** ”

He’s telling the truth.

You cover your face with your hands and sob.

After a few minutes, you feel him touch the front of your legs gently. He’s still holding the key.

You take your hands away, grab his blanket and wipe your face with it. He wiggles into your lap, kneeling over you. Sits in your lap, staring at you sadly.

“What’s Frisk going to d-do?” you croak.

“dunno,” he whispers.

“What were they talking about?”

He sighs.

“that thing doesn’t have a soul. frisk wants to...get one. make one. sounds like they’ve been trying a long time, maybe a...a _bunch_ of times,” he says quickly, rushing it out. “but...i don’t think they have lately. just guessin, though. ‘m gonna try n find out more. i know they...know we were there. they do _now_ at least. flowey tipped us.”

“What’s the key for?” you ask instead, because you’re not sure you want to hear much more without having a long time to think about everything you've already heard. The overheard conversation had been disturbing even though you didn’t understand any of it, really, and so had the flower...Flowey, he’d said. That stuff about “getting” or... _making_ souls, is even more disturbing. And at a time like this seeing Sans using his magic to create something impossible had been less than soothing.

Because the scariest part of this for you is that Sans seems absolutely terrified, and you're not entirely sure why.

“toldja. it’s for you.”

“What’s it for?”

He takes a deep breath.

“something bad happens, you look for a door.” he holds the key up a little, and it’s smooth, shiny. Silver. It doesn’t glow.

“Where should I look for the door?”

He shakes his head, but you don’t think it’s at you.

“no, it’s...any door. whatever’s closest, wherever y’are at the time, okay? The _closest_ door, and you stick this in it. doesn’t matter where, just turn this like...” he makes a motion, and you jump. The key’s turning in every direction at once.

“sorry,” he mumbles. “then you _shut your eyes_ , okay? open the door, go in. close it, open your eyes and stay there til...i get there. or...”

He shuts his sockets and shudders, exhales slowly. “if i don’t come back, just leave. won’t matter anymore.”

“Why...how am I supposed to know...” you don’t even know what you’re asking, but he apparently does since his eyes are open again. He’s staring at your chest.

“sorry,” he whispers. “sorry. you’ll know.”

You feel like you can’t catch your breath.

“hey, hey...” He keeps repeating, looks in your eyes. Presses his forehead to yours when you close your eyes, duck your head.

“i’m _overreacting_. s’what i do. we _know_ frisk, right? i do. i love frisk, an they love me too.” He sounds like he’s getting himself a little more convinced as he speaks. _“that hasn’t changed_. i don’t think it’s gonna come to any of this. i really don’t, k? look at me.”

You do.

“ _i don’t think you’ll need this,_ ” he intones slowly.

“What does it open?” you whisper.

“jus’ somewhere... safer. not safe, just...” his grin flattens even more. “place i got somewhere else. k?”

It’s not, but you nod anyways.

He leans forward, rests his forehead to yours for a long minute.

“only one place _this_ _’ll_ be safe, though.” His pearl-like distal phalange touches your chest gently.

“That... _can’t_ be s-safe,” you stutter weakly.

“it is,” he says simply. “only i know how to do this. it’ll be safe, and it’ll be there when you need it. don’t...tell anyone.”

He takes your hand, pulls it into his own lap, palm up.

“it’ll be safe,” he repeats, lays the key flat against your arm and holds it there with his thumb. “don’t take it out until you use it. you can’t put it back.”

“Okay,” you agree. Nod against him. “Okay, I’ll...I’ll keep it.”

“k,” he whispers, then presses the key into your arm. It disappears.

You know exactly where it is.

He leans back on his bony ass in your lap, doesn’t look at you.

“got another question. do you wanna be able to take out your own soul?”

“What the fuck are you _saying_ to me, Sans?” you ask. Your voice isn’t cold, but it’s hard. You can hear it.

“i can change you a little. make it so you… might be able to defend yourself more.”

“No,” you say, and your voice is cold _and_ hard now.

He flicks his eye lights at your face. “you might wanna-”

“I said _no_ ,” you repeat. “And I don’t even want to hear the rest of what you have to say. What the hell makes you think I would ever want you to _change me_ like that? Or make those kinds of decisions? Have you _ever listened to word I have said to you_?”

You’re not used to seeing him start crying, you realize. He hides his face usually. The magic just sort of wells at the corners, slips down the grooves in his face when he’s upright. He doesn’t seem ashamed of it, and he’s not now.

Well, he _is_ ashamed. But not for crying.

He tries to talk, then his voice catches. He tries again.

“i shouldn’ta said that.”

“No,” you say a third and final time, then reach out and take him into your arms as he falls apart. You hold him as best you can while his whole body shakes.

“the flower said something i know _i_ said,” he sobs quietly. “i know i _never said it_ , but...it was m-me.”

You sigh, push at him a little until he crawls off and lays on the bed. You lay down next to him, pull him close. You’re adamant, but you were never really angry with him. Maybe you could choose to be a little softer, sometimes. You can try to be soft now, because his breathing’s weird, and he’s holding on to you like he’s drowning.

“i’m not a _murderer_ ,” he groans into you painfully, fists clutching and pulling at your clothes.

He’s telling the truth.

He’s writhing with outrage, discomfort. Disgust. His slippers come off, and he doesn’t notice. They get slowly kicked to the floor over a period of time.

“i didn’t _kill anyone_.”

He’s not telling the truth. Well, he _is_ , actually… and he isn’t. He’s not _lying_. It’s complicated, and it can stay that way without your interference for now.

You put your hand softly on his skull, press the way he likes. He groans softly, shuddering, then continues to sob quietly. You can feel his hands shaking where he clutches at you. What he’s going through reminds you a lot of when you’d finally realized you’d...died. And not-died. You’re not sure if Flowey is physically dangerous (although you wouldn’t discount it), but he’s obviously dangerous to Sans if he can cause this sort of thing to happen to him just by saying two sentences.

You slowly realize you’re not very scared anymore. Strangely enough, it feels like a potential kind of permanently-not-scared-anymore. A lot of things are very, very complicated, but that’s something you already knew, and are already used to. It’s okay. Even Flowey, as unsettling as he is, you don’t think is quite as dangerous as Sans might believe, although doing this to him is bad enough.

Or maybe he’s just not that dangerous… anymore? Now he’s just incredibly _mean..._ when he _wants_ to be. And a liar. He _does_ want things, you can tell. Feels things, too. Frisk might make decisions, and you’re going to talk to them very seriously about that rather soon, but right now...right now is fine. It’s okay. But Sans isn’t. He’s still scared, and you don’t actually think what he’s scared of is Frisk, or even Flowey.

Eventually his weeping lessens, then ceases. You lay down the rest of the way facing him, wiping a few last traces of magic away with your fingers. You keep touching him; his face, his skull, his shoulders. A few last shakes run through his body, violent enough to hear a soft clack or two, but it seems to clear his system a little.

You look into his eyes for a long, long time, and both of you feel a lot calmer after that.

“will you make me feel good?” he whispers tonelessly after even longer. “i forgot how.”

Your heart crumples like a piece of tinfoil. He sounds so hopeless, even if he is calmer.

“Yeah,” you say, caressing his orbital bone. “I can try.”

He shuts his sockets with a tiny grunt, a ragged, hitching sigh. He rolls onto his back, pushes a bone arm under you so you can hold him better, closer. You lean up on your elbow and over him, and he pushes his head against your chest, sockets still shut.

You put your hand in his.

His breath hitches, and he pushes it out like it’s hard to get rid of. He puts your fingers under his shirt hesitantly. “just...” he turns his face a little more toward your body, shudders. He touches your fingers to the underside of his ribs, pushes them in a little. Curls them.

“please? i feel gross.” He pushes his breath out again, like he doesn’t want it in there, like it’s going bad wherever he keeps it.

“are you sure you don’t want to do it the other way?” you ask softly. It might make him feel better, more balanced. Pressing your lips to the top of his head, darting out your tongue a little. He’s smooth, and you don’t taste him.

He pushes out his breath. It’s no particular temperature as it pushes through the weave of your sweater.

“i feel gross inside,” he repeats thickly. “want you in there. please?”

You hum a little, rest your cheek on his skull gently. When your fingers touch the tip of his xiphoid process, he puts pressure on your elbow with his hand, like he wants your whole arm up inside him. You don’t move, other than to trace the bone with your index finger. He moves his legs a little, scrapes a socked heel on the bed as he breathes in the same odd, labored way. Fingers at your elbow again.

“Hey,” you say gently. You choose to be soft. “You’re not ready, and...neither am I. I don’t think that’ll feel very good.”

He doesn’t make a sound, but you feel his fingers on your elbow again, not pushing, but...

Oh, dear. Apparently he doesn’t _care_ if it doesn’t feel good. You think about what he said, the way he’d asked. If this had been how he’d felt when he’d sought out experiences with humanity, it’s no wonder they weren’t as pleasant as he’d hoped. But he kept on doing it for a while, according to him. And he’d said he was perfectly capable of engineering his own misery; that takes on a slightly different tone to you now.

The more you think about it, the more you wonder if a good time was what he’d been after in the first place.

Some of the things you know about him make a lot more sense suddenly, but you let that go since it doesn’t matter right now.

You take away your fingers, change positions and just lay down flat on top of him. It’s not something you usually do, but you feel some of the tension leaving him as you distribute your weight, let it press down into him. He shudders, relaxes a little more.

“I don’t want to play ‘let’s pretend Sans is a thing because right now that’s easier than being Sans’. Okay? We’re not going to do that.”

He doesn’t answer, and his sockets are closed.

“Why don’t you want me to touch you?” He knows what kind of touch you mean.

“don’t want you to see it,” he replies eventually. “s’gross.”

You lean up on your elbows after a minute, look at his eye lights when he opens them. They’re still smaller, harder than they should be. He closes his sockets again. You go off him to the side a little, the other side, but you leave a leg thrown over his pelvis. You pull up his shirt a little, and slide your hand underneath but on the outside of his ribcage, flat-palmed.

He doesn’t mean you feeling bad because of him, or at least not only that. He _literally_ doesn’t want you to feel whatever’s going on in him, to see it, or know it that way. Maybe because he feels like it’s not...him? You know him, but he doesn’t want you to know _this_. No wonder it’s off the table.

But he’s asking for help with something, and he’s having trouble with being vulnerable. Trying to force it, maybe. You can relate to that. You feel a deep and calming sympathy come over you, and you pull the flat of your hand from his clavicle down his sternum. A bead of magic forms at the inner corner of his shut socket.

“You know, here’s the thing about bad times. They don’t stay real, not the same way the good ones do. You don’t have to keep them like this. You can just let it go. I _know you_.” You touch the tip of his xiphoid process with the pad of your middle finger. “But I know how one bad thing can seem bigger than a thousand good things, too. A...a million.”

You trace a circle, thinking about the time he left a bag of hotdogs on the inside of your doorknob so you wouldn’t worry they’d been tampered with. His next breath comes out a little easier.

“You know that’s not fair. There’s no _balance_ to that kind of thinking, right? It’s the _good times_ that stay real, no matter what.”

Your draw another circle, a little up the inside of his sternum. The time he caught Papyrus’s scarf before it hit the ground, had it back around his neck before his brother even had a chance to crack his teeth.

Hmm. Touching him this way is different. You’re not turned on, and you’re not trying to elicit that in him, either. You wonder how this feels for him, but it seems like it’s helping. It’s certainly not hurting. You touch his floating rib, remembering how he’d made you food he couldn’t even share with you, just to make you laugh, just so it would be something special.

You want to feel closer, so you hook your leg a little, push your arm under him. He’s pliable, willing. You pull him forward to face you, lying on your sides with him wrapped up in you. It feels good, just different. His sockets are still shut, but apparently, not his _eyes_. You wonder what he sees, and you touch his forehead with yours.

You lean up on one elbow, and he presses his face to your forearm. After a while, his magic overflows there, but he doesn’t shake or sob. His breathing’s a little tight, but steady.

“I know so many good things about you,” you muse, tracing circles just inside his sternum.

You write zeroes on the inside rim of his ribcage until you get tired.

 


	21. [_________]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you look frustrated about something.  
> guess i’m pretty good at my job, huh?

Everyone says we just...showed up one day.

That’s always possible. Likely, even. I don’t know about anything before that. Just...flashes maybe, but not even that clear. Feels like I used to work in a lab, sometimes. Still do, but different. Maybe I had a...grocery store? Maybe a spouse, some kids?

I don’t wonder what happened to em if I did. I try not to wonder about a lot of stuff if I can help it.

Always had Papyrus, though. I can’t be sure, but somehow... I still am. Funny how that works.

Guess what people don’t think on is how much everyone said it was _crowded_ down there, even though it felt like hardly anyone was left. And it _was_ crowded, but not cause of too many people.

Time was different then. Same thing that happened to the water happened to time. Too much time, adding itself up and stretching out, making itself at home. It got everywhere; you ate it up with your breakfast, took it out with the trash. Crawls right inside you and stays there.

Time kept getting bigger, until there wasn’t any space left.

Wonder if that’s how I got this way. Just get piled in on top a yourself until you’re so stacked, you could really be _anywhere_ , if you think about it.

Gotta make enough space to keep breathing, however you can.

It’s the only way to survive.

If you're into that sort of thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Low - Murderer](https://youtu.be/lb0X7XKkzcw)


	22. purple pros and cons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is some real upsettio's. 
> 
> [abuse, trauma response]
> 
> [Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea](https://youtu.be/hD6_QXwKesU)

You and Sans watch the first sunrise of the new year from the beach. It’s freezing, but you’ve got your heavy coat on now.

“had paps get frisk and take em home,” he says after a while.

“Will everyone wonder what happened?” you ask, and the wind tries to whip your words away.

“nah.” His reply makes it into your ears just fine. “they’re used to it. last day’s just wrap up anyhow.” He shrugs.

“I feel bad for Toriel,” you say after a few more minutes. His pained sigh also reaches your ears just fine, and nothing comes after it.

“Do you feel any better?” you try.

The tip of his thumb rasps across his forehead. “that flower really fuckin’ hates me, huh?” he says in a deceptively mild tone. “wonder what i did.”

“Maybe you didn’t do anything,” you point out. “I’m not sure he needs a reason, other than you hearing some stuff he didn’t want you to. Or maybe you did something… good, and he didn’t like that either. You don’t have any way to know.”

“doesn’t like me keepin’ an eye on him, that’s for sure,” he says.

“Who is he?”

“can’t talk about it.” He looks miserable.

“Well, whoever he is, I think whatever he did to you is messing you up, but maybe in a different way than you realize. I think you’re stuck in a bad perspective.”

He waits.

“I’m picking up on the idea that what Frisk does is a lot more complicated than just what happened that day in the BioMed building,” you continue. “Like they can not only make things unhappen, but maybe they can make all this-” you make a gesture taking in the beach, the sun, the two of you, “-unhappen, too.”

The cresting sun glints off the deep grooves under his eyes. He doesn’t narrow his sockets against the glare, because his eyes don’t work like that. The sockets are still dark, and the points in them don’t fade. He keeps his hands in his pockets, but not because he’s cold.

He looks at you.

“dunno. it’s not the same as it used to be, but...maybe.”

You sigh.

“Well, I think what you’re forgetting about is that we could both die today for completely unrelated reasons, too.”

His sockets widen a little.

“I mean it,” you press. “None of us know what the future holds. And like...we can’t control _most_ things that can happen to us. I get why this is super fucked up, don’t get me wrong, but...”

You try not to chew your lips because with the cold and wind, that’s almost guaranteed to crack them.

“For me, this isn’t that different than the kind of uncertainty I live with every day.”

“huh,” he replies softly. “didn’t think of it that way.”

“There’s some stuff I haven’t talked to you about, either,” you say slowly. “Ever since...we met, I guess, time hasn’t been the same for me. I gain or lose it sometimes, and I don’t really know why. Maybe I’m just not experiencing it the same as I used to? It’s hard to know if it’s real, or if it’s just….me, I guess.”

You finally turn your head and look at him; he seems a little surprised but not too much.

“you said somethin like that when you first came to our house, but you never mentioned it again. thought maybe it was just a temporary thing. guess not, huh?”

You shake your head slowly. “I’m changing, whether I want to or not. But that’s just another thing that isn’t all that different than what I’m used to.”

You don’t say it aloud, but for the first time you acknowledge to yourself that at some point you started knowing when people are telling the truth. You’re not sure how you know, and you don’t always, but...it’s there. It’s a fact.

“Alphys gave me my homework,” you say after a bit. “Do you have to be somewhere, or are you willing to be my study buddy?”

He looks into the sun for a few seconds more, than nods without answering and takes your hand.

***

You adjust your knuckles under the side of your face and flip through the next document on your viewer. Your study buddy snores into your neck pleasantly, cuddling in a little further. You rest your chin on his skull while you read, and think.

Most of this makes an intuitive sort of sense, although not much practical sense in the contexts you’re familiar with. There’s nothing about why human souls are stronger than monster souls, and you get the impression that a lot of ‘why’ questions end up being answered with ‘that’s just how it works’. You get it, but you don’t have to _like_ it.

Love, hope, and compassion compose monster souls, and without these they cannot persist. Humans souls apparently don’t need those things, but rather have color-based traits that can be isolated and examined. They can also have something called determination that’s separate from traits, although there really isn’t anything else here about that. Huh.

There’s more about monster’s bodies being made of magic, and having relatively little physical substance otherwise. Because of this, their bodies are much more continuous with their souls than human bodies are.

Continuous, like continuum.

You glance up at the deep blue peony on the wall of your studio room, considering the implications of that. At rest, you don’t feel necessarily aware of your soul, although you suppose it’s more that the awareness itself is the evidence of it. Ugh. It’s all a very convoluted sort of reasoning, no distance between the self that observes and the self that _is_ observed.

A part of you wonders about the changes in you Sans had offered to make. Maybe you should have let him explain himself. No, you stand by what you had said, but it still happened. Maybe at some point you’ll talk about it some more.

Your response had been sincere, but heavily influenced by the fear and uncertainty you’d both been feeling after the conversation between Frisk and Flowey you’d eavesdropped on. You wonder how much of Sans’s ‘work’ is keeping an eye on things this way...people too, you guess. You wonder again just how many jobs Sans has. At this point, you’re aware of at least four. That’s a lot for anyone. And from what Alphys had said, some of it is stuff only he can do. You’ve known he’s had transportation skills for a long time now, and after seeing him make that key (you’re aware of that too, hidden and safe), you definitely believe that. No wonder he seems so tired all the time.

At least he seems like he’s got people looking out for him, as much as they can. You’d already picked up on the way Papyrus nagging Sans for ‘laziness’ actually had the effect of getting his brother to rest _more_ often; not like reverse psychology, more like a reminder to Sans to stay true to his own ideals. Like, ‘this is how you’d be if everything wasn’t messed up, so maybe go do that now.’

It’s like the way Sans had initially teased you for looking at his bones had ended up made you _more_ comfortable checking him out. You sigh in exasperated affection; he’d cranked you up over his crunchy egg breakfast, then given you permission to look. Because he _wanted_ you to look. He really _is_ too subtle for you sometimes.

You thumb to the next document, and wonder if it was really supposed to be in here with the rest. Because it’s a short narrative involving Toriel and Asgore, an adopted human child, and a biological son who had both died. Their names aren’t given, but you feel a chill.

“Hey,” you say quietly.

Sans stirs, and his eye lights coalesce in his sockets as they open to take in your face. Then he shifts around slowly, reads what you’ve been reading. You scroll for him, since his fingers don’t work on your viewer.

“alphie’s got her own ideas, i guess,” he says cryptically after a minute.

“Is it true?” you ask.

“far as i know, yeah.” He sighs. “it’s not exactly a happy story, is it.”

“Poor Toriel,” you say again, and he nods sadly. “I don’t think this is part of what I’m supposed to review for human consumption,” you add wryly. “I think she just wanted me to know this for some reason, like you said.”

You scroll back to the list of known human soul traits: patience, bravery, integrity. Justice, kindness, perseverance.

“That really gave me a lot to think about,” you state baldly.

Sans looks conflicted, then resigned. His fingers rasp across his face, click against a closed socket a few times.

“Frisk thinks me n my bro got made for something. Like...constructs. Experiments.”

You frown, disturbed.

“Why do they think that?”

He looks a little distant, detached.

“said they talked to some people that don’t exist anymore. back underground.”

“Like...ghosts? Dead people?” you ask, trying to understand.

“nah,” he sighs. “ghosts are just regular monsters; not corporeal though. this was something else, not _dead_. just...they don’t exist.”

“You think...” you frown again. “You think they used their power over time or whatever. It made them able to talk to people who didn’t exist anymore? Like...talking _through_ time, maybe?”

He shrugs, doesn’t reply.

“Do you think Frisk is right?”

“can’t rule it out,” he replies evenly. “but...no, not really. I think we came from somewhere else, ended up down there somehow.” The points in his sockets tense. “got some stuff i can’t explain, but i know it’s _mine_. can’t get it to make sense, but can’t ignore it either. i dunno.”

“I can relate,” you sigh.

He looks extremely dubious, and you pinch your fingers to dismiss your viewer. You pick up his fingers from his chest, play with them a little.

“My mother falsified my birth certificate,” you say finally. You glance down. “Do you know what that is?” He nods silently.

“There’s no father listed there or anything like that, and investigating it would make more trouble for me than it’d fix, in the long run. In more than one way.”

You glance down again, but his expression’s unreadable.

“I don’t know why I exist either. I don’t even know...most things about myself, I guess? Well, no. Not exactly,” you muse, thinking about it. “I look at my face in the mirror, and I don’t have points of reference for half of it. Why are my eyes like this? My nose? I don’t look much like my sister; _she_ looks like our mom,” you sigh regretfully. “I’m mixed, but I don’t even know with what,” you say with a small, bitter smile.

“huh,” he replies eventually. “frisk’s like that, too.”

“Huh?”

“frisk. they don’t know where they came from, or why. don’t remember nothing cept underground. they talk like that sometimes, cause humans ask em stuff and they don’t know what ta say. guess i have a hard time understanding exactly what they mean sometimes, but...”

His sockets change shape a little. “guess i don’t, at the same time.”

You lean down and rub your eyebrow across his forehead a little.

“You have someplace you're supposed to be already, don’t you?” you ask quietly.

You feel him shrug again.

“once I head out, might not be able to see you for a week or two,” he admits reluctantly.

You exhale a little explosively. “Well, it might be selfish, but I’m glad you’re still here. Thanks.”

He’s shaking his head. “nah,” he half-whispers, then turns to bury his face in you again. “i didn’t do nothin’.”

You stroke his skull and just breathe together a few minutes.

“’m a mess,” he adds.

“I knew you were a mess as soon as I met you,” you point out. “Did you know there was road salt in your slippers? Just sort of fused on there. And yeah, it was cold but not cold enough yet that year for it to snow. That means it was there since the year before, and you didn’t give a shit. So, not much about you is coming as a shock, at least…not this part of it.”

He leans back his head to look up at you.

“you noticed something like that, huh?”

You raise your eyebrows a little, gaze into your painting.

“You ever heard that the devil’s in the details?”

He nods in your peripheral vision.

“All I really get is the details. I mean, I get so bogged down in them, it takes me forever to see the big picture, or know what’s really going on. I’m always ten steps behind everyone else, it feels like.” You sigh. “I’m lucky I survived the academia death gauntlet, because I’m not really suited to much else. I can’t think on my feet.”

“eh,” he demurs quietly. “you just...think deeper bout stuff, maybe. makes you more likely to be right in the end.”

“I don’t really care about being right. I wish I was right _less_ , because I see way too many worst-case scenarios.”

He looks troubled. “hey. you uh. helped me out a lot. you want me to touch you or anything?”

You give him a bit of a weird look. “I’m not keeping score,” you point out.

He just shrugs.

“No,” you elaborate slowly. “I like how we are now.” Okay, yeah. Sometimes he is hard to read, you guess. “You can go back to sleep if you want to,” you add. “I’m still looking through this stuff anyways, and you make a good chin rest.”

His face softens out of unreadability and into something a little more familiar. He nods, and tucks his face back into you with a sigh.

You summon your viewer, pull up the University dialogue. You take several of the files from Alphys and create an attachment...interesting how the ‘answer’ and ‘answer all’ widgets are so close to each other. Easy to make a mistake that way. You’ve complained about it before, but the wheels of bureaucracy grind exceedingly slow.

Sans’s snore starts up again, and you smile and rub your cheek on his sleepy skull.

You flick your finger and send the file attachment of monster information, excepting the narrative about the children, to everyone who has ever worked, attended, been contacted by, or inquired about Ebott University, then dismiss your viewer and lay your upper body back down with a suppressed groan. You wiggle your limbs in between and under his until you’re tangled together sufficiently, then exhale and try to let your mind wander. You’re glad for his mildly soporific aura yet again, because you’d usually be too stressed out to sleep with so much on your mind. You’re also a tiny bit glad he’s going to be working, even though you’ll miss him a lot. Miss this, too.

But it’ll give you a better opportunity to talk to Frisk alone, and at this point you don’t want to wait too much longer before that happens.

***

Frisk’s face is carefully blank when they open the door, and you finish sending a message with a nod before you look up.

“We should talk,” you gesture. “Are you free?”

“I know you were there,” they reply, then nod you in past them. “Of course,” you reply as you walk past them.

Sans has been gone a week already, which sort of sucks a lot, and also sort of has given you enough time to actually think through everything that you’ve seen and heard, and a lot of the stuff you’ve learned.

To your surprise, once you get to the dining room they just keep going toward the stairs that lead down toward their sitting room, and presumably their bedroom. They pause, turn back to you. Maybe they noticed the absence of your footsteps, which can be felt through some parts of the floor.

“You’ve never seen my portrait, have you?” they ask, tilting their head a little. “The one Papyrus did. It’s in my room.”

Then they turn around and just keep going, so you follow them.

Frisk’s room is filled with shelves, much like Papyrus’s, but it’s hard to notice what on them because of the dark-brilliant and massive painting on the wall to the left when you walk in. It dominates the room.

It’s square like yours, but it must be five by five at least. Shockingly enough, the center of it is a chaotic, roiling red heart-shape, and something in you _recognizes_ it. It… echoes.

This is a more literal (representational?) portrait of Frisk’s soul than you expected. It spreads itself garishly on a complex purple field of bones, thin, geometric, and angular rather than the swirling organic patterns you’ve seen in Papyrus’s other paintings.

You take a step closer, and notice that the roiling, uncertain appearance of the heart itself is partially caused by a certain asymmetry in the number and shape of the bone patterns that create the heart, offset by the rigid angularity of the purplish ones that form the field it’s on.

There’s no white in this painting that you can see. The highlights look to be the pale orange you remember seeing in all his other works...the orange bones, you suppose. the overall impression of painting itself is moderately disturbing.

Frisk is watching you look at the painting impassively.

“I see why you keep this in your room,” you comment after a moment. “I keep mine in a private room, too.”

Frisk sighs.

“I don’t mind people seeing it,” Frisk gestures, unconcerned. “But the colors don’t really go with anything else in the house.” They smile a little weakly, a little crooked. They’re really young, aren’t they? “These colors don’t really go with anything.”

You look at Frisk a little sadly.

“I released the information.”

They blink.

“I thought you wanted to talk about it first. What parts did you decide-”

“All of it,” you state, cutting them off. “Nothing I saw would put any monsters at risk, and I can’t see any reason why it should be a secret. Not that there was much in the first place.”

They look a little wounded.

“Were you worried I’d change my mind about it?”

“Not really,” you reply, looking at the painting again. “But I already told you I’d do what I saw fit, and you didn’t actually _ask_ me to look over the information at all, although apparently you authorized it? Alphys did.” You glance at Frisk again.

“Do you really think someone _made_ Sans and Papyrus? Like experiments? Or...hybrids?”

Frisk’s eyes widen, and they glance to the side evasively.

“You think they can help you make a soul for your...friend? Or you just want to, what? See how they’re made and use it like a blueprint? What would you even use to start with, what are souls even...”

You shut your eyes a second and take a deep breath.

“Well, I released the information, so who knows. Maybe humans will be able to create some kind of-” you fingerspell it”-franken-soul you’ll be able to use for your friend.” You turn to them beseechingly.

“Would you really end all of us for that, though? Just snap your fingers and we wink out of existence? If it doesn’t work, and you can’t actually save him? Why is he so important to you?”

“He is that important to me,” Frisk answers finally, refusing to address anything else. “It doesn’t matter why. He’s the only one I haven’t...I haven’t been able to save.” They have a strange combination of both anger and relief on their face. It doesn’t suit them.

“You can’t always save everyone, Frisk. Especially if they don’t want to be saved,” you gesture painfully. It doesn’t make you happy to be saying this. “How long have you been trying this? Have I...” you swallow, look down. You don’t want to ask questions about yourself, because you have a feeling Frisk might know the answers. And even if they don’t, you probably still shouldn’t. You try and steel yourself, think of the fear you’d seen in Sans’s sockets, in his shaking hands.

“I don’t think you should use the powers you have, Frisk. It’s not right. It’s not right to make those kinds of decisions for everyone, even if it’s so you can keep trying to save someone else. It’s not...it’s not right,” you finish with a limp gesture, a trailing whisper.

Frisk’s eyes glitter with rage and unshed tears.

“Sans fell down,” they sign decisively, unforgivably. “Six years ago.”

Your throat closes. “Wh-” you gasp a hitched breath. “What?”

“You know that monsters’ souls are threefold. Love and Compassion. Hope.”

You breathe through flared nostrils.

“Falling down is what happens when a monster loses one of those three things. Their souls can’t sustain themselves without them. They just...” a haunted look is in Frisk’s eyes. “unravel.” They swallow reflexively.

“That’s how against their nature it is. And he just… I really thought there was no way something like that could happen, especially after everything else was _over_ , after we got to the _surface_ -”

Tears threaten but still don’t fall.

“I don’t know why. I don’t think anything in particular even happened, and if it did I don’t know what it was. One day he just...didn’t get out of bed. Papyrus couldn’t even-”

The tears finally escape as Frisk takes a deep, shuddering breath. You stand there feeling turned to stone as they continue.

“One time, a time that didn’t happen, Sans said something to me. If you have some sort of special power... isn't it your responsibility to do the right thing?” Their eyes pin you in place.

“Well, how the _hell_ am I supposed to know what ‘the right thing’ is? He never explained _that_ to me! He’s such a hypocrite. Says I have to take responsibility for what I can do, but when has he _ever_ taken responsibility? Even for himself? He’s _allowed_ to just give up, but I-” Now they’re crying in earnest.

“Maybe he would have rather I just let it end there. Rather than have to wade through what this does to him again. But I did think about it what he said. A _lot_. And I can’t see for the life of me how watching the people I love suffer and die, _when I could make it otherwise_ , is any more right than...than killing them myself,” they finish sharply, looking nauseous.

“It’s possible rationalize anything,” they continue, sick expression deepening. “Are they safer after the worst has already happened? So they can’t be hurt ever again? Is that what he really wanted all along?” Their eyes bulge with horror, then they turn to you.

“Please listen to me when I tell you. I cannot. Accept. That. I understand that I don’t have the right to make these decisions. But please, also understand that I _will not accept_ that death is better than life. That nonexistence is better than existence. And so, I choose because I don’t have the right _not_ to decide, either. Everything is a choice. Choosing not to choose is itself a choice.”

You think about the time Sans offered to change you.

It _is_ a choice.

You already knew, and you _hate_ it. You feel it crystallizing inside you.

“What did you rationalize? What did you try to...to justify?” you ask insistently, scaring yourself.

“What do _you_ know that no one else can remember?”

You don’t actually want to know the answer.

But here you are.

Frisk’s tears dry up, and their knees loosen as they fall ass-first on their bed.

“Sans killed me 348 times before I managed to get us to the surface,” they sign decisively, unforgivably. “I killed him eight times.”

You smell the pain.

“I don’t want to hurt you anymore. I don’t want to hurt anyone,” they sign. “Please understand, it wasn’t the same underground as it is here. I could..” they trail off. “I fell, and when the barrier broke, it had only been one day. It had been...” their face blanks out carefully. “eons, possibly. I don’t have a way to know that.”

“But you don’t understand what it _took_ to get him to kill me. I don’t think you...can,” they gesture hesitantly. “The possibilities that can cause him to do something like that… in practical terms, they don’t exist. It should have been impossible. Do you understand? It’s not his _nature_.”

“ _Why?_ ” you ask incredulously. “Why would you do something like that?”

“To see if I could,” they inform you sadly. Rub their face a second.

“Every time, he _thought I got out_. Do you see? He thought I’d gone back to wherever I came from. But there was just...” Their eyes unfocus, grow dull. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was lost in darkness while he talked to me, explaining everything. He encouraged me, or...hated me. Cursed me, and I _deserved_ it. Wished me well and told me goodbye. Told me to go to hell. But I already had, and there was nothing _there_ ,” they sign desperately. “Time didn’t happen, but I stayed as long as I could until eventually, I had to...try again, something different each time. Trying to get out. I even...”

They rub their face again roughly, then stand up and stare into the roiling purplish red of their portrait.

“I killed everyone,” they add finally. “I killed them all, more times than I can count. My mother. Old people. Children. I looked for as many people to kill as I could, everyone who saw me or talked to me, until nobody came. I was afraid, and I hated them. I hated myself, and I couldn’t get out. They killed me too; every last one of them. Except for...”

Frisk looks at you.

“There is no possible place or time where Papyrus kills me.”

They look back into their painting. You notice they don’t say they never killed Papyrus.

“I love him very much. But that’s...not why. Even though I think that being able to be _certain_ about just one thing, that’s what made me eventually able to do what I needed to do. To free us all.

I love him because _he’s so good_ , whether it’s convenient or not, whether anything else is good or not, but more than that... it’s because he’s the only person who sees me for who I really am. The whole me, not just the...” they gesture indecisively. “the parts that are acceptable, or useful, or...please them.”

You wait til Frisk looks back at you.

“Who _are_ you?” you ask, this time accompanied by a dry whisper.

Frisk smiles.

“I am a murderer.”

“You were...just a child,” you whisper, sign. “You didn’t know-”

“I stopped being a child a long time ago,” Frisk cuts you off. “Eons. I knew what I was doing. But, more than that. This is _part_ of me, now. It will be forever. Not that ‘forever’ really means anything to me anymore.”

“I don’t believe that,” you answer, hiccuping. You don’t know when you started crying.

“It’s true whether you believe it or not,” they sign casually. “Even absolute annihilation can’t change this. I found _that_ out eight times,” they add, like it’s part of a grocery list.

They take a step toward you.

“But maybe you _should_ believe me,” they sign, tilting their head in a way that seems...unfortunate.

“Maybe if he can see it _without even looking_...what can _you_ do?”

Their hand goes to their chest, and you backpedal until you hit the wall.

“Don’t,” you rasp.

“Nobody wants to see this,” they continue, as if to themselves. “Nobody loves Chara. And they _shouldn’t_ , of course, but I try and do it anyway. He told me I should try, that even the worst person can get better...if you _try_.”

You vomit, and it gets everywhere as a red, threatening glow starts at the corner of your vision.

“Does it make a difference that I feel bad about Sans? Not for killing him. _That_ wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to… to _ruin_ him, like I got ruined before I even had a chance to find out there _was_ anything else. My hands were covered in dust before I even knew what it was, what _I_ was. Is that _justice_? Is that fair?”

“So I forced him to kill me. It wasn’t easy, but once I figured it out...you couldn’t _imagine_ what he was like. Even when I pretended I wanted to stop fighting, _he never stopped._ He shoved them right through me while I laughed the blood into his face. I tried to get it in his eyes, if I could.”

You cover your own eyes, but that doesn’t stop Frisk’s voice, somehow. It’s not okay.

This isn’t Frisk’s voice.

It continues.

“It’s been eons, but this is still the oldest I’ve ever been. How can you _love_ Sans, after what I did to him?”

You’re on the floor now, you think, and the dark blue cloud has come to steal your vision. Part of you knows it won’t help if something else happens, but for now...it’s...there.

“Is he ruined? I bet you know better than anyone. He trusts you. Did he show it to you? Is it...disgusting?”

They sound viscerally horrified. Fascinated.

“ **No** ,” you hear yourself growl from somewhere deeper than your chest. You know they can hear this.

“ **He’s. Not.** _ **Ruined.**_ ”

You can’t see anything, and all you smell is vomit and your own fear, your own...resolve. Integrity.

“ **And neither are you** ,” you add, the truth of it rings across infinite universes.

It stops.

A thin, heartbroken wail clears your vision suddenly, and you can see Frisk curled up in a ball in front of you. You’re both on the floor, you’re shoved against the wall still, and the painting is just a painting. Wordless howls of grief are coming from the broken wad of human in front of you, and you’d try and pat them on the shoulder or something if it wasn’t for the fact that you’re coated in sickness. At least you didn’t piss your pants.

The door to Frisk’s bedroom opens, and the world’s tallest living skeleton takes in the scene, sockets narrowing enigmatically, then drooping into profound sorrow. A gloved hand rubs across the bone between his eyes furiously for a moment.

“OH, _FRISK_. FOR FUCK’S SAKE.”

 

 


	23. character witness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Tiffany - I Think We're Alone Now](https://youtu.be/w6Q3mHyzn78)

Papyrus is holding Frisk, or at least you assume that’s what the quietly weeping, blanket-covered lump in his lap is. Frisk’s a little bigger than you, but you’re starting to think there’s no one Papyrus can’t manage to cuddle effectively. Papyrus’s teeth are slightly parted, and his sockets are uncharacteristically teardrop-shaped. He looks up as you descend the stairs, wearing borrowed clothes after your brief shower. You just went ahead and tossed your clothes in the trash.

Whatever Frisk had done seems to have harmed them as much as you, and you can’t really find it in yourself to be angry at them. In fact, you feel a small roil of guilt as you consider that this is the second time you’ve berated them into explaining things to you that you might have been better off not knowing. Still, despite the fact that your soul aches from it and you feel incredibly emotionally raw, all of these secrets are the kind that fester unaired. There’s so much pain in this family, and it seems like you’re becoming a part of it regardless. Maybe it’s time for you to shoulder your share.

You come and sit down perpendicular to Papyrus and his sad burden, and sigh heavily through a raw throat.

“DO I HAVE YOUR PERMISSION TO SPEAK FRANKLY WITH YOU?”

Papyrus is looking at the wall across the room, not you. You think you know what he’s talking about. It shouldn’t surprise you but somehow it still manages to.

“Yeah,” you rasp.

He leans down, grabs his own ankle and sets it on his knee, adjusts the weeping human a little in the resultant extended lap. He pulls his gloves off, surprising you again, then holds them up in front of himself. He begins, sockets still fixed on the far wall.

“Nothing I tell you now is meant to excuse or dismiss Frisk’s behavior,” he gestures with impossibly long, thin phalanges. They gleam with meaning, with strength. “It is meant to provide context for what you’ve just endured.”

He goes preternaturally still for at least two full minutes, and neither speaks nor breathes. He continues as suddenly as he started.

“Frisk is not well. It is much worse than the way in which you were not well, some time ago.” Papyrus’s sockets shut a moment, then open again. “I do not believe that when they do something like this that they are trying to be cruel. But there are also very many things I do not know.”

“I do know that a part of Frisk is something that was not always there. I do not understand how it is possible that this is the case, but I also have never known them any other way than they are now. Frisk has done things before like what they did to you today, but not in a long time. It is inappropriate and-”

Papyrus is still for almost five minutes this time.

“-violent.” he gestures with finality. “This is also why my brother needed more information about what happened where you work, when Frisk showed their soul. We had to know if anyone was harmed.”

Papyrus’s expression is tense, and he still hasn’t looked at you. It seems like this is a very difficult conversation for him.

“I believe Frisk does this because they want to communicate somehow, and are unable to do so. When the pain becomes unbearable, they speak from their soul in a way that can harm others and themself. Sometimes, they even try to-”

Papyrus cuts himself off and closes his sockets in grief, then finally turns to look at you. His sockets widen slowly.

“You surprise me,” he gestures.

Out of habit, you sign back at him silently.

“A lot of people say that I surprise you or… I challenged you? I don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“You know the truth,” his incredibly elongated bones shape the words decisively; words you don’t know, but understand anyway.

“What truth?” you reply, baffled.

His head tilts a little, as if you aren’t seeing something extremely obvious.

“Most of them,” he gestures bafflingly, “but especially that anyone can get better if they try, and that everyone deserves that chance. To _do_ better, and be loved and protected while they recover.”

“And that...challenged you?”

Papyrus turns pink, but doesn’t necessarily look pleased.

“No,” he replies a little reluctantly. He looks back at the wall, becomes still for a long moment again. He looks back at you.

“I do not want to tell you,” he says after a long moment.

“You don’t have to,” you answer sincerely.

He looks relieved.

“I am responsible for Frisk because of what I believe.”

Papyrus looks at you for a long moment, and his face grows incredibly sad again.

“Frisk is here with us because they tried to do what they did to you... to Toriel. It was Frisk’s decision to come and stay here. Frisk does not want Toriel to know what they are. They are worried that it will hurt her, or that they will hurt her in some other way. Whether they mean to or not.”

You take a deep breath, then another.

“Who is Chara?” you gesture finally.

Papyrus looks down at the weeping lump in his lap. His hands lower and rest on the blanket. Eventually, his eye sockets shut and you wonder if somehow he is falling asleep, even though Sans isn’t here.

Then he raises his hands reluctantly.

“Chara died a long time ago.”

His sockets open to unfathomable darkness.

“Chara was Toriel’s child.”

Papyrus’s teeth part.

“Chara is Frisk’s soul.”

Your hands come up and cover your mouth as you try to absorb that.

“How is that… possible?” you manage eventually.

“I do not know,” he reiterates regretfully. “Part of Chara exists at the same time and in the same place as Frisk. No one is happy with this.”

“Is Chara some kind of... ghost?” you ask.

Papyrus shakes his head. “Chara was a child who was hurt very badly before they came under Toriel’s care, as was Frisk.” That’s not really an answer, but you feel the wound in your soul deepen a little. Of course. Of course.

You sign hesitantly. “Who is… f-l-o-w-e-y?”

He doesn’t flinch, but he looks like he wants to.

“Also Chara, and also not.” His fingers click a bit on that one. “I do not want to tell you.”

“I understand,” you sign right away, and he relaxes slightly. Sighs.

“Time alone cannot change us from having been children who were hurt very badly. Time is like fire; it can wound or nurture. Frisk hates that they cannot change what they have been. In order to grow, in order to get better, they must learn that they can become _more._ That they can make _room_ for Chara. In order to learn that, they must let go of that hate. I am not as patient as my brother, but I believe in Frisk and that is enough.”

Bravery. Integrity.

“Papyrus,” you gesture his name sign and ‘you’ hesitantly at him, even if it’s awkward. “What _are_ you?”

“I am a skeleton,” he gestures back with perfect confidence.

“Did...” you trail off, then firm. “Did _you_ forget, too?”

“I cannot forget something I have never known,” his fingers click softly at you. “All I have ever known is my brother.”

You can’t stop your eyes from filling with hot tears. Another thing Sans never even hinted at it. Or maybe he has, and you’ve just been missing it. He’s subtle that way. Too subtle for you, sometimes.

Papyrus tilts his head. “I am not as smart as he is. This is a fact, not something that bothers me. I believe he may have given up trying to remember where we came from. I do not know what he thinks about this, because it is not necessary for us to speak of it. But I believe that and he and I were once part of the same thing. If we spend too long apart, we become... unbalanced. You have seen it yourself in my brother; I too, become strange. I do things I do not understand.”

He looks into a distance further than the opposite wall. Then he seems to come back with a different perspective.

“I do not think I need a reason for existing in order for that existence to be valued and important. I do not need to be explained in order to have meaning.”

“But...” you still can’t let it go. “How can you and your brother be monsters with _human_ soul traits?”

“’How’ does not matter to me. What matters is what I do, what I say, and the ways I am able to love others.” His eyes echo his soul. “ _What_ I am is irrelevant, because I know _who_ I am.” His gaze softens.

“My brother believes that the reason we look the way we do is because of those traits. He doesn’t say so, but he believes that he is small and weak, and that his speech is impeded because his traits are undesirable. Either in a monster as he is, or in that combination. He has many struggles I do not.”

You can’t help but think about Sans’s body, the way his jaw and floating ribs are fused to other bones. You think his fibula and talus might be fused on his right side, too. The way he carries his weight in his broad hips; his slow, shuffling gait. He has almost infinite control over fine motor skills and small, precise dodges but large, whole-body movements and gestures from him can be clumsy sometimes, almost awkward. But is it fair to compare himself to his brother, as if one of them must be ideal and the other, somehow less than? Difference doesn’t necessitate hierarchy, especially with only two points of comparison.

Papyrus’s sockets close for a long moment, then open again.

He continues as if he’s forcing himself.

“And I have struggles _he_ does not. Bravery without fear cannot and does not exist; my fear is _inherent_. It is extremely uncomfortable for me to speak this way, even when it is important. Because I do not _want_ to be understood.”

He looks at you, sockets darkened and uncharacteristically pained.

“I want others to see only what I _show_ them. I do not want to share who I am _to_ myself, _inside_ myself. I do not want to be _known_.”

You taste every flavor at once; you taste smoke.

“I understand,” you gesture.

His face softens when he sees that you do. “That makes it easier.” He looks down at Frisk for a long moment.

“Frisk desperately wants to be known and validated by others, but does not want to know _themself_. This conflict is extremely painful, and leads them to harmful behavior despite their intentions. I think you are like me, and you understand that they are trying to get better.”

You nod slowly. Papyrus sighs deeply, sockets listing a little.

“I do not want to talk anymore.”

You nod again. He looks relieved.

Papyrus slowly puts his gloves back on, rests his massive hands on Frisk for a few minutes. Then he glances over at you, and one of his impossibly long arms lifts. He doesn’t offer himself; he only offers what he’s willing to give. And it’s a lot. It matters.

You stand up and come over, sit down next to him and Frisk. He puts his arm around you and the three of you stay that way for a long time. There’s plenty of room for all of you.

It helps.


	24. that's what she said

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Smashing Pumpkins – Disarm](https://youtu.be/d1acEVmnVhI)

Sans shuffles heavily out of the dining room and towards the couch sometime later. You’re not sure what time it is but he’s in rough shape. You can tell he hasn’t been sleeping.

By now you’re stretched out next to Papyrus under your own blanket. Whatever Frisk did caused some damage somewhere, although you’re sure it’s not anywhere near what had happened last time. You just ache terribly.

Sans’s phalanges click rapidly over his closed sockets for a few seconds, then he squats down in front of Papyrus’s lap. You hear the soft rumble of his voice coming from his bowed skull for a few minutes, but you can’t understand what he says and you don’t hear any reply. Maybe Frisk hears him, maybe they don’t. They stopped crying a while back, but they still haven’t moved.

Sans’s head comes back up, and Papyrus and he exchange a bit of the language they both speak; it sounds like an argument to you, but that might just be your take on the dissonance of the tones and crackles. Not an angry argument, if so. More like a sad one. Sans sighs, and finally turns his head to look over at you.

“you hungry?” he asks, looking haunted.

“Yeah,” you whisper, but you struggle up with a groan, manage to sit. At least you’d had the sense to stick your meds in your pockets before coming over here, but they’re eating a hole in your empty stomach now. You get to your feet, and Sans manages to struggle to his with a faint noise. “I’ll help,” you add unnecessarily.

“DON’T BE RIDICULOUS, SANS,” Papyrus says archly. “I’LL TAKE CARE OF IT AS SOON AS _THIS_ IS TAKEN CARE OF.”

“’m not gonna make it that long, bro,” he slurs tersely without stopping his slow shuffle back toward the kitchen. “jus’ lemme do it fore i fall over, k?”

He goes around the corner and you hear something get knocked over with a clatter almost immediately. Papyrus stops staring at the wall long enough to angle his sockets your way pleadingly; his face reminds you of the night he’d spent at your apartment holding a giant ball of bedding you never saw again. You nod slowly and notice his grateful look, quickly blanked out before you finish turning to join his brother in the kitchen.

Sans is noisily kicking his stepstool over to the stove when you turn the corner. He ascends it and starts pulling reused bottles out of his pocket, emptying them into the massive pot sitting on the burner. He sees you, looks at you miserably.

“can you get that big red tub out of the cabinet?” he rasps, jerking his chin across the kitchen at one of the high cupboards.

You nod. It’s pretty obvious what he means, and you bring it over and set it on the counter where he indicates. He looks like he’s yanking at something on the panel of the oven, and you jump as it comes away and he starts messing with the buttons and wires behind it without stopping his pouring. The pot finally fills, and he pulls his clothed forearm over his face for a second, staggers heavily off the stepladder.

“Is this why you wanted to change me?” you whisper, surprising yourself. “To be able to defend myself from Frisk?”

His grin manages to flatten itself even more. He shakes his head, but you don’t think it’s necessarily a denial of what you said.

“that’s gotta heat up,” he rasps. “an you...” He looks away from you, over at the door on the opposite side of the dining room.

“you should take a look at that before it gets any worse,” he sighs reluctantly.

You wish you didn’t know what he was talking about.

“I’m tired and hungry already,” you protest peevishly.

“me too,” he answers shortly, still looking at the door. “this’s special for pap, so you already helped s’much as you can. tastes like shit but there’ll be some left when you’re done, okay? then you should probably come back, if that’s...” His face is dull, both impassive and its opposite. “...somethin’ you’re okay with.”

“I’m not mad at anyone,” you start, but he just shakes his head again, then tilts it toward the door. You notice Papyrus doesn’t glance at you as you go by. You’ve never actually been in here, but you assumed it was a bathroom. You always use Papyrus’s because it’s nice and you like his little soaps. But when you walk in, there’s a big, padded chair and a table with a lamp on it in here even though the room’s about the size of a bathroom. Huh.

Sans leads you to the chair and squats in front of you, face getting blanker by the minute. The combination of whatever that flower had done to him, working, insomnia, and then presumably what had happened today really looks like it’s done a number on him.

“Did you have to leave work early?” you whisper.

He sighs, expressionless. “can’t leave early. just had ta... finish early.”

“Is Frisk going to be okay?” you ask hesitantly.

His eye lights pin.

“how can you-” he bites off whatever he was about to say, exhales slowly.

You decide to drop it for now. “Just go ahead. And finish up before you... fall over, okay?” you say quietly.

He puts his elbow up on the arm of the chair, hides his face in it as you look down at his skull sadly. You’d caught a glimpse of his expression right before he’d managed to conceal it. His fingers come up to your chest, and you feel a pulling unlike the times he’s touched you before. It’s not uncomfortable, it’s just not particularly anything but him taking your soul out for you, because you can’t do it yourself. Like when Vulkin does it. He’s turning with his head still bowed before you even have a chance to bring your fingers up under it, and he heaves himself up and sidles out the door soundlessly without turning around.

But your eyes are caught up in dark blue, and yeah...you see it. It’s not that bad, but it could have been. Sans was right, but maybe not for the reasons he might’ve thought.

The moment your refusal to choose (and subsequent hatred of it) crystallized inside you, it had called out to Frisk’s self-hatred. You see how it happened. Frisk pointing out that you have people who are important to you, too. Your disbelief and resentment. Your denial, the rejection of a painful truth. You’d handed Frisk a knife, and they’d shown you the hilt was also a blade. You’d both grabbed on and used each other to wound yourselves.

Frisk’s wound is worse because their scar tissue runs deeper. If this is something Frisk lives with, it’s no wonder they need to be able to take out their own soul. Acknowledging your own fears and flaws closes the wound and prevents it from worsening. That’s how to be true to your soul, and true to your trait. It isn’t the same as feeling like it’s your fault; it’s just reiterating that the only thing you can control are your _own_ words, behaviors, actions. Which patterns you choose to adopt. Understanding why things happened the way they did, and making room for the consequences.

You’re not okay, but you’re going to be. The path is there, and you set your feet on it. Then you put your soul back where it goes with a soft sigh.

When you come out of the room, Sans has joined Papyrus and Frisk on the couch, but the only snore you hear is Papyrus’s. His skull is tilted back on the couch, and his teeth are open but his expression seems looser, comforted. Like he’s finally recovering from this, too. Maybe it’s the fact that all but two inches of thin yet chunky oatmeal has been emptied from the biggest mixing bowl you’ve ever seen sitting on the coffee table, or maybe it’s just his brother’s balancing presence slumped up against him under his arm.

You sit down a few feet away as carefully as you can. None of them stir, but you don’t think Sans is asleep yet; maybe his closed sockets are meant to give you as much privacy as he can manage. You don’t see a utensil, so you just grab the enormous bowl and drink what’s left of it; hopefully Sans has already has had his fill. It’s sickly sweet, but its otherwise bland flavor doesn’t taste bad to you. Then again, if Sans sincerely likes his brother’s spaghetti (the more you get to know him, the more you suspect that he not only does but is also the reason why it tastes Like That), you can see why he would think _this_ tastes like shit.

When you lower the bowl, his sockets are open again. He looks so sad. Well, he actually looks like he’s sorry that his troubled adult child metaphysically wounded you with a sickening aura of intense and possibly quasi-sexual menace so intense it injured them twice as badly, but doesn’t say so because it’s antithetical to his traits to apologize for choices he doesn’t regret making. And he doesn’t regret taking care of Frisk or being with you, and it’s possible that kind of confrontation would have been inevitable. It _looks_ a lot like ‘sad’, though.

You quirk an eyebrow at him. “Seriously?” you sign.

He doesn’t shrug, but he does glance away for a moment and pull a hand out of his pocket. Papyrus is pretty out, and you suppose his brother’d know by now exactly how much movement is capable of disturbing him.

“side effect of using movement to talk,” he replies, using truncated ASL gestures augmented with fingerspelling for one hand.

You sigh and grab a pillow, place it gently over his femurs. He still manages to look surprised when you lay down on your back with your head on the pillow so you can look up at him, but his expression softens incrementally over a few minutes. You just lay there looking up under his chin for a long time, slowly memorizing his bones.

“Does it hurt when you try to open your mouth?” you ask randomly after a little bit. You find it’s a little difficult for you to fall asleep right now too. Maybe it’s the pain in your soul, maybe it’s the fact that although it’s dark outside now, it gets dark in the afternoon this time of year. And you still don’t know what time it is. Well, if nothing else, Sans’s sleepiness will hopefully take you with it once he manages to get there. Frisk had told you before when he gets too worn out, he can’t sleep until Papyrus heals him a little, so you assume that’s what’s going on now. Multitasking, in a way.

He gestures a negative. “too much like work, too little result,” he replies.

You notice there’s a lot of skeleton resonance happening at the moment, although you can feel it more strongly from Sans than Papyrus. Makes sense based on proximity. Which is fine; you’re willing to soak up whatever tertiary benefit is to be had from it, and you’d been invited, after all. You’re getting the impression that despite what’s been said, this does cause some sort of expenditure for Papyrus at least. You suppose the trough of oatmeal is supplying him the energy to keep it up.

“I don’t think I’ve ever actually _seen_ Papyrus eat,” you gesture at Sans. “The food’s just gone next time I look. He does eat it, right?”

His face softens considerably. “not an accident. thinks he looks weird when he eats.”

You blink. “Does he?”

“no,” Sans replies. “i do.”

You blink again, trying to follow that reasoning. Then you try to imagine just how overactive your empathy would have to be to internalize the insecurities of someone close to you, even if they don’t actually have those insecurities. If just imagining they might feel self conscious was enough to make you self conscious… for the rest of your life.

“Your brother is the most e-c-c-e-n-t-r-i-c person I’ve ever met,” you say after a minute.

“yeah,” he replies proudly. “he’s the coolest.”

“That’s true,” you add, because it is.

You don’t know if Papyrus was right about them having been part of the same thing once, especially considering you have no idea what that actually _means_. In a manner of speaking that’s what all siblings are, you suppose. You wonder if there’s a way to reassure him that even speaking from his soul, a lot of what he said was just as obscure and convoluted as anything else he’s ever said to you. It was also just as sincere, helpful, and relevant. But it leads you to the conclusion that it really is impossible to understand either skeleton without the context of the other.

You wonder if Sans had raised Papyrus; it seems possible from what Papyrus had said to you. Maybe he doesn’t remember if he did or not. Maybe it’s one of those things that Sans doesn’t know how he knows, and Papyrus thinks is unnecessary to talk about. You’d usually feel foreboding about a relationship that seems to have so many unspoken agreements and convoluted workings, but it comes off less like they’re being deceptive and more like they’re being very, very careful. If they’ve been through as much hurt as you suspect they have, it makes sense that the last thing they’d want to do is take the chance they could hurt each other, too. Papyrus with his jokes for an audience of one and benevolent manipulations; Sans with his unstinting praise and undemanding reminders to focus.

Maybe in the end they’re just two very complicated people who understand each other and get along.

Sans exhales slowly after you’ve both rested quietly a little longer, and it seems like something in him finally loosens.

“ready for sleep?” he asks, one of his fingers rasping against another a little despite him as his sockets droop.

“Definitely,” you reply, and you turn onto your side facing into him, curl up a little in preparation. Sleep comes in like a flash flood, but not before you feel his phalanges come to rest lightly on your head instead of disappearing back into his pocket.

***

The next morning you open your eyes to the endless black field of Sans’s grubby, bone-scented shorts and a discordant three part harmony of snores. Sans pulled his hood up at some point, and his upper body’s fallen over to lean against his brother, who’s slowly slid in the same direction in a sort of domino effect. You’re not sure which part of the amorphous blanket-lump that is Frisk is supporting the conglomerated weight of the skeleton brothers, but from the sound of the third snore they’ve managed to survive it so far. You manage to pull Sans’s limp skeletal fingers out of the back of your sweater without too much effort, and the fact that you do it without a wince lets you know Papyrus’s healing has certainly worked its literal magic.

You feel awesome, so you decide to freshen up in the bathroom, borrow a few more of Frisk’s clothes (Papyrus’s don’t fit and Sans’s aren’t fit for your workplace) and get ready for work. It’s actually an even shorter walk from here than it is from your place, and none of the couch denizens look like they plan to stir the least bit anytime soon as you let yourself out quietly.

The workday goes by fine other than you noticing the potential to be a bit more emotionally reactive than you might usually, but nothing provocative happens so you make it to lunch without feeling much of a dint in your energy levels. Diane comments on it as she knocks on your doorjamb to invite you to have lunch together, and you nod and take her up on it.

“So...that information you sent out seems like it’s causing a stir,” she remarks casually as you shove portions of some kind of monster goo sandwich into your face.

“Really?” you inquire once you’re mostly done chewing. “I mean, I guess that makes sense, but I don’t think any of it was all that mind-blowing.”

She shrugs a little, picking at her salad. Most of the monster items available at the college take the form of convenience fare, and you wonder if her health conscious eating habits guide her choices visually despite the fact that she knows monster food doesn’t actually work that way.

“A few groups are gearing up to start another round of requests for monster consultants,” she informs you with the tone of academic gossip. “A few others are trying to make a stink about the information not being released through ‘proper channels’ but really it’s just them huffing their own farts because someone else in their field got to see it first.”

“Got to _publish_ on it first you mean,” you mumble around a mouthful of sandwich, then swallow since you didn’t even have to chew it in the first place. Oh, well. Bad habit die hardest, and you don’t actually care.

She rolls her eyes with a smile. “Well, you know how it is these days. Any asshole with a peers-on-a-leash reviewed journal shoves something out the second it hits. And there’s always enough mouths out there to suck it right up, no matter what kind of rushed-out shit they spew.”

You nod emphatically. And half of them _still_ don’t accept monster citations. “Fuckin’ joke shacks,” you grumble politely.

“Still better than it used to be,” comes the expected reply, and you shrug amiably.

“How professor Bob doing, speaking of consultants?” you ask.

“Eh, you know how she is. Only talks about what she decides is worth talking about, and that’s all you get out of her,” Diane smiles. “But she seems okay, actually. Maybe relieved? Who knows, maybe she’ll get permission to do some real work for a change, instead of leading OverEbott’s most prestigious circle jerk.”  
You giggle a little, your sandwich finished. Looks like Diane’s done too.

“Hey, I was wondering something. Could you run me home today real quick, then over to the skeletons’ place after? I can walk to either, but even on a good day I can’t do both,” you sigh.

“Yeah, no problem,” she answers readily. “How are they doing, by the way?”

You sigh, think for a minute. “You know how when one person gets the stomach flu, the whole family gets it at the same time?”

Diane’s face scrunches up. “You didn’t come to work sick, did you?”

You wave her off impatiently. “No, no...I’m...it’s a monster thing, _you_ can’t catch it. I just need to pop home and grab some stuff, I’m gonna stay over and help out there while everyone gets better.”

Diane gives you a look. “But you and Frisk _can_ , huh?”

You look to the side. “It doesn’t really work like that. It’s not contagious.”

“Fine, I won’t pry,” she accedes with a smile. “Sans is probably glad to have you around to help while he’s sick, huh?”

You just nod, and start to gather up your plate and utensils for the bin. Diane frowns a little, but keeps her word not to pry.

***

To your surprise, Frisk opens the door a few minutes after you knock, which you do since you’re not quite comfortable even at this late point with just walking into their house. Or maybe it’s more that you’re never a hundred percent sure any particular door will lead to what you’re expecting, and are exercising understandable caution. You don’t doubt that you’re welcome, even with the tense atmosphere.

Frisk looks terrible, or at least they do from what you can see of their tearstained, puffy lower face since the blanket covers the top half and the rest of their broad form is shrouded in it. It smells like popcorn in here, and skeleton snores fill the air like a chainsaw in an apiary. They just duck their head miserably and leave the door open, shuffle away sadly to crawl back to the couch with their two still-unconscious caretakers while you move past to put your bags and stuff on the dining room table.

You go up to Papyrus’s bathroom to change, wash your face and brush your teeth, then head back down to the living room. Looks like Frisk’s shoved a few pillows into the gap they’d occupied previously, then just laid down across the still-half-collapsed brothers’ laps like a slatted mattress of bones with the blanket pulled back over them. Several empty bags of popcorn and the massive bowl decorate the coffee table.

You push a few aside, sit down on the table, and lean over to touch the blanket mound on the shoulder.

It stirs, and Frisk’s hands and face appear, mouth pressed in a line and eyes narrowed defensively.

“Are you mad at me?” you gesture.

They blink, the puffy facsimile of impassivity dissolving from their expression.

“No,” they answer quickly. “You’re...aren’t you mad at me? I hurt you,” they say, shamefaced. “I was...terrible,” they add, looking a little sick.

“We had a fight,” you say, not even realizing that’s what you had been going to start with. “That just means we have to talk it out, see what we can do to make it better. That’s what Papyrus would say if he wasn’t in a coma, right?”

Their mouth actually quirks at that a little. They nod, and shuffle around a bit. You stand to give them a little more space, notice it looks like someone’s been using handfuls of popcorn to scrape the remains of oatmeal out of the giant bowl like some kind of unholy chips and dip.

“I brought some food,” you sign at them with a wince as they get to their feet. “You wanna head to the dining room and have some with me?”

They nod again, shuffling in a way that reminds you of Sans toward the other room, blanket in tow. You glance at the couch with a sigh; Sans finally finished falling over during Frisk’s exit and is now laying sideways across his brother’s lap. They have to have been asleep for almost 24 hours at this point, right? You glance outside; not quite dark yet so maybe not.

“How long do they usually sleep for?” you ask Frisk as soon as you catch their eye. They shrug a little while they finish unwrapping a cinnamon bunny they’ve already dug out of your bag.

“Maybe 12 more hours?” they gesture once they’ve crammed their mouth full. “Usually not more than two days.”

Yeesh.

For some reason, neither of you sit. Frisk keeps cramming bunnies into their mouth, chewing lackadaisically until they swallow the food along with a sob, and they’re crying again.

“Don’t you hate me now?” they ask weakly.

“I don’t hate you,” you gesture silently, even though you’re starting to realize not much you’re capable of is going to be able to rouse the brothers. You can see the denial isn’t making a dent, although at least you can tell Frisk can still see what you’re saying, despite their swollen eyes and fresh tears.

“I’ve been through enough terrible things to know that _I don’t know how it was_ _down there_ ,” you try instead. Maybe the best thing you can do is be honest. Compassionately honest if possible. “I can intellectually understand that you and everyone you love spent centuries in some kind of pocket dimension murdering each other in every way imaginable until you were all resurrected without any memory of it on the surface,” you say with a sigh, “but I don’t have any emotional or practical context for that kind of information.” You press your lips together for a moment, thinking hard. “I’m upset because we had an argument and hurt each other, and I feel awkward about it because I didn’t handle it very well. The thing is, I’m probably going to be fine.” Unless or until they annihilate everything, but you leave that part out. “Are _you_ going to be okay?”

Frisk shuts their mouth. “I...don’t know,” they reply hesitantly. “But I don’t think that has to do with...you?”

You exhale, finally sit down. “That makes sense,” you admit carefully, then unwrap one of the cinnamon bunnies for yourself. “Can I ask you about a few things, or do you need to go lay back down? I can tell you’re still not feeling well.”

Frisk shakes their head slowly, pulls out a chair across from you. Sits in it while wrapping the blanket a little tighter. They’ve stopped crying at least, and now they nod.

“It was Chara I said I loved, wasn’t it? When you decided we shouldn’t die in the BioMed building. I said it but you knew I was talking to Chara or something. That’s what you left out when we were talking in the judgement hall. Right?”

Frisk freezes, then hunches a little further. You rub your face; that’s really all the confirmation you needed. You take a few bites of the cinnamon bunny at once, then swallow it in a big lump since it’ll just dissolve anyhow.

“That must have been really scary and confusing, and I’m sorry for that. Like...sorry for both of us, I guess.”

Frisk doesn’t say anything.

“I’m dropping it,” you gesture reassuringly. “Can I ask you about something Sans said to me a little while back?”

They take a deep breath, then shove some more bunny in their mouth and gesture affirmatively.

“A little while ago Sans told me he could change me somehow to make me less vulnerable or something, and to be able to take out my own soul. Do you know what he was talking about?”

Frisk makes a pretty impressive confused buttface at you, but like they’re trying to imagine what he could have been talking about.

“That’s pretty much how I reacted,” you add for levity, and it might’ve even worked a little. Who knows.

“Sans is _really_ bad at explaining things,” they comment, chewing and frowning.

“I’ve heard that somewhere,” you add a little ironically.

“I’m not very good at it either,” they admit after the rest of the bunny disappears into their boundless maw. “You...can’t take out your own soul now?” they ask, blushing a little.

You blink. “No,” you gesture slowly. “Most humans...don’t even know that’s an option. I didn’t.”

They rub the lining of their eye a little guiltily. Yeesh. You hope they didn’t get any cinnamon in it. You’re starting to realize just how much Sans must have raised them...or maybe they just take after his habits while staying here.

“That’s not something you need to get anything changed to do,” they gesture slowly. “You just have to learn how to do it,”

You blink some more, for a different reason.

“Wait, what?”

“You have to learn to do it, I think,” they say, a little less sure. “I mean. I don’t remember not being able to, but I know that’s how it usually works? Like...I don’t know. I can use a toilet too but I don’t remember learning _how_.”

“Is it…. it’s like you said: humans don’t have magic. We never did, right? Just...souls?”

“Yeah,” they reply.

You think really hard for a minute. “But humans don’t know how to uh, use our souls?”

“That’s a weird way to say it, but...maybe?”

“What about the other thing?”

“What was the other thing?”

“He said something like...” you frown again. “I’d be able to defend myself a little?”

Frisk leans their chest against the table, looks down at its surface like they’re thinking hard. You hope they’re not straining themself, but it seems more like the conversation is energizing them at this point. Huh.

“Papyrus did your painting, but other than that, have you ever been in an encounter?” they ask after their head pops up.

“No,” you admit.

Frisk gets a dawning look of understanding on their face.

“Okay, so. That _would_ maybe change you a little. And it’s really hard to explain,” they say, a little excited. “I know _I_ can’t explain it, it’s just...you _don’t_ know, and then once you _do_ know... you can’t _not_ ,” they say, and you have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

Until you do.

“Do you think maybe he found the worst way possible to ask me if I wanted him to _teach_ me something?”

Frisk’s mouth gapes a little for about three seconds.

“That actually really sounds like him, yeah. He’s got a lot of unusual ideas about stuff that should be simple. And even worse ways of explaining them, like I mentioned.”

You can’t stop the smile, or the warm glow in your heart. Well, your soul, probably. Yeesh.

“He’s really good at explaining complicated things, though.”

Frisk smiles back. “Yeah, I guess so.” They meet your eyes for the first time in...well. Since the Debacle.

“Papyrus is about to wake up. Do you want to watch?”

You blink. “Why?”

Frisk looks at you, a hundred percent ingenuous. “Because it’s funny?”

“Wait,” you frown a little. “How do you know?” You haven’t detected any change in snoring.

“I just do,” they shrug, unconcerned. “I don’t want to miss it.” They stand and shuffle away, blanket dragging at their heels. You follow curiously and manage not to step on it, and stand beside Frisk as they just stand there next to the coffee table, waiting.

If Papyrus’s neck wasn’t a tiny bit visible above the voluminous chiffon scarf he’s got around it, you’d wonder if his head was still attached because it looks like it’s about to roll right off behind the couch from the amount it’s flung back. For some reason the idea disturbs you more than it should, but you shove it back _somewhere_ , wherever it is things like that go. His mouth’s wide open, although the inside is shrouded in darkness even more than Sans’s. Speaking of whom, his brother’s still sprawled over his lap sideways, hood pulled up concealing the top half of his skull now, and the mittens have somehow reappeared on his hands since the last time you saw him. Judging by his grin, though, you’d say he is in fact legitimately asleep, rather than one of his ‘naps’ that he manages to slip witty rejoinders through while simultaneously ducking all other forms of social obligations.

Just as you figure you’ll wander off an occupy yourself otherwise, you jump as a snort like a deer carcass in a woodchipper emerges from Papyrus's skull somewhere, and his whole body jerks forward just short of dumping his unconscious brother on the floor. He rocks back a moment, moving his head on his neck a little stiffly, looks down and sees him as he opens and closes his sockets a few times. He just sort of pats Sans’s still-snoring form absently, then notices the mess on the table. He turns his head (a little more fluid now), and sees you and Frisk standing there staring at him like you’re at the skeleton zoo, and his sockets open and close some more.

He scowls at Frisk, ignores you, then immediately starts throwing empty popcorn bags into the empty, scraped-not-quite-clean oatmeal bowl. Once it’s full, he shifts Sans somehow and when he stands, he’s got him up on his hip like a massive, used-nail-file-scented toddler. He darts down at the waist to grab the bowl full of trash, and flounces off into the kitchen without a word.

Frisk shuffles over behind the table, leans down to grab one of Sans’s slippers and turns to walk past you, presumably to replace it on the bestockinged bone foot it’s fallen off of.

You touch their elbow a moment before they pass.

“More cute than funny,” you gesture silently.

“NOTHING _CUTE_ IS CURRENTLY OR PREVIOUSLY OCCURRING.”

You give Frisk a Look.

“Is it okay if I hang out here for a day or two?” you call while Frisk grins and shakes their head in confusion. You sign what Papyrus had said, wondering why he’d left Frisk out of it. They they double over, huffing their weird laugh with the dirty slipper clutched against their chest, and you guess that’s why. Huh.

“YES,” comes the answer from the kitchen. “SANS, YOU DIDN’T EVEN PUT MY SPAGHETTI CAULDRON ON TO SOAK! I DON’T MIND IF YOU USE IT, BUT THE LAST THING THAT WILL ENHANCE MY CULINARY PROWESS IS AN OVERLY LONG TURNAROUND ON EQUIPMENT MAINTENANCE. WE’VE _TALKED_ ABOUT THIS.”

There’s no answer but a dry snore.

***

Although Papyrus had eventually put him down the night before, Sans had still been asleep when you left for work this morning. However, this time when you knock Sans himself answers the door, grinning casually. He looks (and smells) a lot better.

“heya, good lookin’. get in here.”

You smile back as you walk after him, shutting the door behind you and following him toward the dining room, putting your bag on the table. You hear a thump from downstairs; safe to assume Frisk’s feeling better too then. Which reminds you.

“Any chance I could get some coffee? Today took it out of me for absolutely no reason.”

“as long as you do half the work,” he answers easily, and heads to the kitchen. You follow and get the coffee and press down while he fills the countertop kettle at the tap.

“You can’t drink the tap water, can you?” you ask idly, and he shakes his head.

“just the stuff from underground,” he says offhand, shrugs. “i don’t really need to most of the time, so that makes it easier.

Another, louder thump. You frown. “Is Frisk taking a nap or something?”

Sans’s grin quirks down at the edges. “they got mk over,” he answers shortly and plugs in the kettle. You glance down into the den on the lower level, but neither is anywhere in sight. When he pulls open the coffee tin and starts measuring it out, a rather loud and unmistakably Frisk sort of noise happens from downstairs, and you meet Sans’s gaze, more shocked than you should be.

“Ummm?” you inquire eloquently.

“how bout we go out for coffee instead?” he says with a long-suffering look, and you grab your bag and coat back off the table, shrugging into both rapidly as he yanks the plug back out of the wall with a wince. You take his hand but not quick enough to miss a second and uncomfortably evocative cry that’s mercifully swept out of your ears as soon as you shut your eyes. You’re eager enough to flee that you don’t even remember how scary it had been with your eyes open the last time Sans had taken you on one of his shortcuts until the shifting feeling’s already over. When you open them, you’re in a recessed doorway somewhere downtown, you and Sans almost pressed against one another to fit, and you sigh in relief.

“feel up to walking just down over there?” he asks hopefully, pointing at a door out of the alley and across the main drag. “i don’t usually drink coffee, but there i _can_ if i want,” he winks.

“Anything to escape,” you reply, blushing.

“these old bones’ve heard worse,” he says dryly, keeping hold of your hand as you start walking out of the narrow alley and out into the main drag of shops. “least we got outta there before mk started up. they get _chatty_ ,” he comments with an unfortunate sort of grimace. “been in my room all day, didn’t think they’d still be at it,” he adds with a wry chuckle. Then you’re at a prettily painted blue door that just reads “The Tuffet” and he’s pushing it open for you. A rush of warm air hits you as you walk into a dainty cafe with bakery cases lining the front. The monster behind the counter is certainly spiderish, and multiply limbed. Pretty, too.

“heya, muffs. long time no see,” Sans mutters casually as he leads you over to a low table and chairs near the window.

She saunters over and blinks her five eyes pointedly as you both take your seats.

“Hello, _dearie_ ,” she hisses significantly at Sans. You don’t have any trouble understanding her sharp voice. “Come to finally pay off your _bill_ , I see.”

Sans grins at you impishly in your peripheral vision. “ya see how she’s shakin’ me down here? muff’s stuff’s _way_ overpriced. you can cover me for today, right?”

“No,” you answer shortly without looking up from the menu.

He sighs with impressively fake sorrow, and you hear the heavy clink as he rummages in his pockets.

“Then what’ll it _be_ , dearie?” Muffet says in much the same tone.

“eh. how bout two coffees ta start?”

“Yes, thank you,” you add, then “what’s a spider donut?” and look up finally.

“It’s a donut. Made by Spiders,” Muffet grins at you predatorily, tilting her head.

“made _of_ spiders,” Sans adds with a wink. It’s the wink that tells you he’s not actually joking about that part.

“I’ll have that, thanks,” you nod. Muffet nods back, takes your menus and steps daintily through a door to the back without another word.

“feeling adventurous today?” he asks mildly as you lean back in the wooden chair. At least it has a deep cushion.

“Honestly, nothing can faze me after Dog Salad in Bed,” you remark, and his chuckle warms your heart. You needed to hear it more than you were expecting, and his face softens as he looks at you.

You sigh a little heavily after a minute. “I didn’t realize it was like that with them,” you say vaguely, meaning Frisk and MK. His unconcerned shrug makes something else occur to you. “Is it...safe for them to be, um...” you say very quietly, although you’re alone in the place and there’s the kind of formless, discordant jazz playing that tends to dissipate conversation pretty effectively. It seems like everyone’s pretty preoccupied with anything Frisk does with their soul, and after what happened, you can see why that might be the case.

His face goes a little off, but he sighs and answers. “mk just lets frisk do human stuff to em, mk likes it, everyone’s happy,” he says quickly, shrugging a little uncomfortably. The tip of his thumb rasps across his forehead a few times. “really wish I didn’t have to know about it, but it is what it is. mk’s a good kid,” he finishes with a mildly perturbed look.

“Did you...know MK, before?”

He looks at you a little surprised. “a course,” he replies easily enough. “that’s snowdin’s kid.”

“Wh-” you start, not sure what you’re trying to ask. That's the name of the town he used to live in underground, right? You try again.

“What?” Okay yeah that’s not actually any better.

He’s tilting his head at you. “whole family fell down when they were just a baby, no one even knew they’d _had_ a baby til we found em,” he says slowly. “mk stands for ‘monster kid’, cos some bonehead thought we should let asgore name ‘em. When me n paps had ‘em, they were too young to remember but that doesn’t mean we don’t look out for ‘em,” he says, like he’s explaining that water is wet.

“Are you saying you adopted...MK? Years ago?”

“i think we got a misunderstanding going on,” he says, scratching his cervical vertebrae in puzzlement.

“When MK talks about their parents...who are they talking about?”

“all of us,” he answers in puzzlement.

“Everyone who lived in Snowdin...are MK’s parents?” you goggle.

“well, yeah,” he says. “right now i think they’re staying with endogeny.”

“Do I...know Endogeny?”

“yeah, from grillby’s,” he says, sounding a little more like you’re not having two separate conversations at the same time. “big white Dog, kinda gooey? hangs around lola.”

“Oh, I thought they were an elemental.”

“heh. dog’s an element as far as Dogs are concerned.”

You realize this has gone off the rails slightly and you try and steer it back, even though the topic’s a little uncomfortable. “So… someone figured they’d check up on MK to make sure nothing… bad was happening?”

He looks at the wall, then back at you with a sigh. “checkin up on snowdin stuff’s pretty much me or paps. especially if frisk’s involved, so yeah. i had a talk with em, made sure all’s well. besides that, alphie gave frisk the birds n bees a long time ago, let em know maybe be careful with the _rest_ of that stuff.” His eyes dart to the side a little.

“Wait,” you whisper. “Does Alphys... _know_?”

He meets your eyes a little grimly.

“alph knows everything,” he says at last. “frisk doesn’t know she does, but...yeah.”

You gape at him wordlessly, and he inclines his head once.

“Why are you telling me this, though?” you ask softly. “Why now? And...” you look around at the deserted shop. A few spiders dangle behind the counter. “Here?”

He looks at the floor. “cause she wants you to know, and she’s been getting in my not-an-ear about it. bout a lot of things, maybe.” He sighs, looks back up at you sincerely. “me n alph have been working together a long time, been friends a long time. family in our own way, i guess. she can keep anything locked up so tight you'd never guess the kinda shit she’s holding back, but she doesn’t like it. she _knows_ what it does to people.”

You’re gaping at him again, and shut your mouth with a little click.

“she says i need to talk to you more, otherwise i’m just jerking us both around,” he says, face soft but more than a little iridescent. “didn’t think she was wrong, but after all this happened, i guess it made me realize she’s _right_.” he sighs. “jus’ wanted to keep you out of it,” he finished sadly.

You press your lips together as something occurs to you.

“I get feeling like you don’t want to get me caught up in your problems, but at the same time...wanting to keep me out of it? I guess at some point, ‘it’ kind of just ends up meaning...your _life_ ,” you say, not meaning to get pithy about it but here you are. To your surprise, Sans looks at you incredulously, partially covers his sockets with a bony hand and starts laughing helplessly.

“What?” you ask, a little offended.

He parts his fingers.

“that’s what _she_ said,” he answers. It’s all in the delivery, and you can’t help but smile along.

“awww, man,” he sighs after a minute, then he moves his hand down while his face softens. “you’re always so serious, right til you’re not. always gets me right here.”

You blush silently at where he indicates, as well as his word choices.

Of course that’s when Muffet returns with the coffee and singular donut.

“Thank you,” you whisper politely yet again.

“Good to see you keeping better _company_ ,” Muffet remarks sharply to the smug skeleton across from you, with absolutely zero effect on his facial expression or demeanor other than another round of rummaging phalanges and exchanged currency.

Muffet winks half her eyes at you and instead of going back to the counter, removes herself all the way to the kitchen (presumably) again.

“Are you actually a shady dude or do you just think it’s funny to act like one?” you ask as the door shuts behind her.

He tilts his head a little. “not sure ‘m really qualified to make that particular determination,” he says after a minute.

“I feel like I’m in your mafia office,” you comment, sniffing at your spider donut. It smells like dusty cinnamon.

He manages to look both incredulous and amused, and is completely ignoring his coffee.

“muffet doesn’t like me,” he says like he’s trying not to laugh. “but she likes money, an i usually got some so i pay her extra to stop staring at the back of my skull like she’s gonna lay eggs in it,” and now he _is_ laughing.

You’re smirking, trying not to join him. “I thought everybody liked you,” you say wryly. Your spider donut also tastes like dusty cinnamon and butter. You’re surprisingly into it.

“nope,” he says, still grinning and huffing but darting his eyes to the side a little.

“Oh my god, Sans,” you say, then you finally take a long sip of your coffee while you watch him squirm. “Did you used to have a thing with every monster who can cook, or just all the ones that own restaurants?”

His eye lights sharpen more than you expected. “nah, i’m not that far gone,” he says a little too brightly. “paps is still safe from me, s’far’s i’m concerned.”

You literally tap out on the table. “I give up, you win forever,” you rush out quickly, chagrined. “I’m eating, and I’m extremely sorry for teasing you in the first place. _Seriously_. I’m sorry.”

“nah,” he says, shrugging a little and shifting in his chair. “you just been hanging around me for too long. s’okay,” and just like that, the tension dissipates.

“Speaking of the interdimensional sex police, where is he when you really need him?”

“paps probably needs a lil time to himself about now,” he shrugs, unconcerned. “can’t blame ‘im.”

“Oh,” you reply. “Is it a secret, or...”

“nah,” he smiles. “’m sure he’s out in the woods, doing whatever.”

“In the woods? All that stuff between the mountain and the water, you mean?”

“yup. used to do the same thing most days back in snowdin.”

“That makes sense,” you say, fascinated that Sans is volunteering even more information about his life before whatever it is now. _Townie origin stories_ , you think to yourself. “Was it one of those ironic names, or was it actually cold?”

He looks amused. “trust me, nothin ironic about that name. more snow than you could break a stick at.”

That’s not quite right but you let it go. “So he just runs around in the woods until he feels...recharged?”

“not running the whole time,” Sans replies a little absently, finally picking up his mug of coffee, sniffing it, setting it back down. “looks around, makes stuff.”

“Does he bring his paints with him or something?” you inquire, trying to figure out what on earth Papyrus could be making in the middle of the woods.

“nah, s’like...” He frowns a little, thinking. “dunno. one time he put all these trees so you could just walk up in em, super easy like until you could see up over everything when ya looked down. or these vine hammock things? i like those,” he rambles. “he planted all these bushes like a maze, but you can jus step over em if you want to. hides money around, makes stuff out of snow in the winter. one time he made some swings.” He grins over at you, winks. “kids go apeshit when they find em, doesn’t matter what they are.”

You’re somewhat astounded. “But… can’t people get hurt if they don’t know they’re there?”

“nah, nothin like that. can’t get stuck in em for real, they come apart. can’t get hurt by em any more than you could running around in the woods in the first place.” He grins delightedly. “leaves out food sometimes. monster food, y’know. for anyone who might find it, goes there just ta walk n think like he does, sneaking around for whatever. canoodling.” He chuckles. “or if anyone gets lost out there,” he adds a little more seriously. “but really he just does it cause he likes to,” he finishes with a half-shrug. “calls em ‘is puzzles. or, uh. ‘japes’. he knows which is which i guess.”

“That still just blows my mind. I don’t know how he’s always that surprising, but he is,” you say quietly, sincerely. “I don’t know, it’s just...he’s a _really_ good person,” you say, probably unnecessarily.

His face does something complicated. “wish more people saw it like you,” he says quietly.

You frown. “How can they not?”

He just sighs.

“you gonna tell me what’s eatin’ you?” he asks instead, looks back to meet your gaze. You drop your eyes a little as you sip uncomfortably from your mug. He angles his head back toward the door behind which Muffet had disappeared some time ago without looking away from you. “i’m just as happy to keep feeding the meter s’long as i got to, but I think this place closes at some point.”

You sigh. “I thought we were having a pretty good third date,” you answer evasively. “I didn’t want to mess it up or anything.”

He smiles gently. “third date, huh? didn’t know you were counting, but i suppose it’s just as well we’re taking it slow.”

You sigh, heart twinging a bit. He really _isn’t_ a pushy person, and there’s no need for you to put him through any more of the wringer than you already have.

“It feels like my whole _life_ is happening out of order,” you find yourself grumbling, then you rub your chest a little self-consciously. Sigh again. “Sorry,” you mumble, not looking to see his reaction.

You stare into your mug, pick it up, then put it back down.

“When you said you wanted to change me, did you really mean you wanted to teach me something?”

You don’t hear an answer, and you don’t have the courage to look up right now, either.

The tension’s back, and you hate it.

“i dunno that there’s much difference,” he says quietly, finally.

You look up.

He really doesn’t see a difference, does he.

“There is in my mind,” you answer just as quietly. “But you already told me you’re bad at explaining things, so I guess that’s on me.”

“nah,” he sighs, long and sad. “s’ on me too.”

“Well, it turns out I want you to, if the offer still stands.”

His eye lights flicker sharply. “you're serious?”

“Yes,” you say, tilting your head at him a little. “does it?”

“uh, yeah.” he says a little breathlessly. “okay, yeah we can um, yeah.” He rasps his thumb tip across his forehead.

“Why do I surprise you so much?” you ask a little impatiently.

He rubs his whole set of distal phalanges over his teeth rapidly for a moment, which is an idiosyncrasy you’ve never seen from him before. Jeez. Is he okay? You hope this isn’t stressing him out too much. The whole being more talkative about whatever Alphys wants him to talk about with you thing. You open your mouth to tell him not to worry about it when he finally answers.

“it’s not you,” he says carefully. “i’m settin myself up, thinking no one listens to me, or… that i can’t change anyone’s mind about stuff. but you always listen, and...”

He looks over, meets your eyes.

“you think about it, ask some questions. you change your mind if you decide to. you get more information, make a decision based on that. i dunno. never met anyone like you before.”

“Are you ever going to drink your coffee?” you ask a little breathlessly.

His fingers come up and click across his left socket as he closes it, but he starts huffing with amusement at the same time.

“she gave me human coffee,” he answers grudgingly after a minute.

You can’t help it, you snort loudly. The hand over your mouth can’t keep the giggles in either.

“Oh my _god_ ,” you blurt in a choked whisper, still trying to stifle your laughter. “What did you _do_?” you ask, probably unwisely.

“eh. nothing in particular,” he says, and for some reason you believe him. “she’s just like that.” He winks. “it's kinda hot, right?”

“Yeah,” you agree, since for some reason you get what he means. “Why didn’t you just switch with me?”

He shrugs. “not your problem.”

You fix him with an apologetic look. “I don’t think you’re a _slut_ ,” you say quietly, sincerely. You put it into your face as much as you can. “I meant that you’re a _shitty cook._ ”

He sighs, and cuts his eyes apologetically back at you. “that occurred to me about five seconds too late, yeah,” he sighs. “sorry.”

“Me too,” you smile.

Muffet comes out of the door yet again, takes her time mincing her way over. Winks at you some more.

“It’s not safe to go back to your place yet, is it?” you ask sadly.

“nah,” he grins back at you.

“You wanna just go back to mine, then?” you continue, eyeballing Muffet. But his hand’s already back in his pocket, rummaging and clinking.

“nah,” he repeats. “’m having the best third date of my life. be a shame to cut it short.”

 


	25. all checked out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Radiohead - I Might Be Wrong

Two weeks later, Sans waves his mittened hand and everything dims. The colors leach out of his clothing, but his body stays bright while yours fades. His left slipper slides out until his stance is low and wide, and instead of keeping his hands in his pockets like he usually does they’re tucked behind his back. His sockets are closed, but something about the way he holds himself makes you realize this is a balanced, at-the-ready posture for him.

“goes a little different with me than most monsters, okay? usually it’d be your turn right now, but i go first.”

You look down at yourself, point.

“Can you see this, too?”

His sockets open. “yup,” he says, then adds in a hurry, “not like otherwise. can see where it is, see what color and that’s it. it’s not, uh. intimate.”

You nod, a little relieved. “So what are you going to do on your...turn? I have to wait for you?”

He sighs. “ok, so… think about what you could do right now.”

You stand there looking at him.

You wonder what kind of person confronts someone who might have violent intentions with his eyes shut and both hands behind his back.

You wonder how he manages to look half asleep and ready for absolutely anything.

“see?” he says after a minute.

“Yeah,” you say musingly. “I guess I do.”

“i’m gonna take a look at you. check you out.” He opens his sockets and winks. “watch how i do it, k?”

You try, and although his sockets seem very dark and intense to you, it’s not telling you much about what he’s doing. Or seeing, you suppose.

He grins. “okay, now i know some stuff about you i didn’t before. or, uh. wouldn’t have, i guess.”

“Like what?” you ask curiously.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out instead of answering.

“ _think about what you could do right now_ ,” he intones strangely, and you hear something else under his words, over his words. They carve the air with deliberate meaning.

So you think about it, because you can’t _not_.

Well, you can’t run away. You don’t know how you know that but you sure do. You could...ugh, you could try and attack him, or pretend to? You don’t like that. You could talk to him, which you’ve been doing but for some reason it’s different _like this_ , when his voice _does that_. Maybe your voice can do that too? What a weird idea. And you can spare him, like Papyrus and you did before, and that ends it. Well, it does if Sans agrees to end it, right? What happens if he doesn’t agree?

“What happens if I spare you?” you say, and you realize that yes, your voice is kind of doing something too, and it made something happen.

He smiles a little. “my turn again now,” he says casually. “that’s what happens. i’m gonna look again.”

He does, and when he nods you feel it shift. You don’t know what it is or how you know, but something about doing this is showing you how. He was right, you probably do just have to do it, rather than having it explained.

His voice changes, but in a way you can’t actually perceive.

“why don’t you take a look? see what I got going on?” He winks again, then shuts his eyes, grin softened and patient.

That seems like a bad idea.

You’re not sure you like this.

“I spare you,” you say shakily, and feel it happen again.

“it’s too late, darlin’,” he says softly, sockets shut. “you already know, so you might as well look.”

You can’t say anything. You don’t _want_ to say anything, and you don’t want to do this anymore. His shoulders move but nothing happens. It changes.

“I spare you,” you repeat shakily. This isn’t safe.

You didn’t realize Sans had been almost imperceptibly and constantly shifting until now, when he goes unnaturally still. Maybe he was talking behind his back. Then he nods, and color leaches back into the world. His eyes open and his hands go back in his pockets.

“it’s done,” he says quietly.

“You didn’t change me,” you protest weakly. “That’s not what happened!” you manage with a little more force.

He looks away and sighs heavily.

“What is it?” you say, getting a little frustrated.

“what’s your hp?” he rumbles reluctantly.

“Ten,” you say immediately, then your throat chokes shut.

He looks at you searchingly, sidelong. “what’s mine?”

You take a short, panting breath. Another.

“One.”

“what else?”

“Too smart for his own good. Loves you.”

That isn’t what he meant.

“what’s my at?”

You hate this. You hate him.

“One,” you groan.

“what’s yours?”

You cover your face.

“c’mon,” he says gently.

“Don’t ask me that,” you whisper, horrified.

He waits.

“Twenty,” you croak.

You’re crying now, and he comes up and wraps his stupid bony arms around you.

“what’s your weapon?”

“Shut up,” you groan miserably. He doesn’t stop you from sitting down heavily, although he manages to ease you a little. He doesn’t let go.

“it’s okay. what’s your weapon?”

“Words,” you grunt resentfully. “What did you _do_?”

His breath stirs your hair fitfully. “changed you a little. you might be able to defend yourself more.”

“I don’t like this.”

“didn’t think ya would,” he says evenly. “i shouldn'ta said anything to you.”

“Did you _know_ this was going to happen?”

“not like you mean.”

“ _Why_ did you do it?”

“you asked me to,” he answers easily enough.

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“i did,” he answers again. “then i said take two weeks to think about it.”

You’re so angry you’re shaking, because you can tell he doesn’t feel responsible for this at all. And he’s right. You did ask for this, even after initially rejecting it. And now you can never go back to the way you were. You can’t ever _not know_. Ever again.

You know exactly where and how hard to hit him in order to kill him instantly.

“ _I don’t like this_ ,” you repeat thickly.

He just sighs, rubbing his stiffened fingers in a small circle between your shoulder blades.

“I don’t ever want to come here again,” you say vehemently, needing something to blame.

“okay,” he agrees easily. “let’s get up. you got your jacket, right? how bout we go someplace nice. i like it, at least.”

“Okay.”

***

Ebott doesn’t look small from up here, but it does seem slightly more manageable.

You’re standing with Sans in an alcove embedded in a sheer cliff face on the leeward side of the mountain, where the wind isn’t too bad. It feels safer here than it probably should. You can see all the way to the water, and all the woods and buildings in between. It’s cold and beautiful, and the sun’s going down.

His eye lights dart around seemingly at random, and he lifts his chin from time to time, watching something intently.

“nice, right?”

“I can tell when you can see things I don’t,” you admit a little reluctantly.

“yeah,” he agrees. “it’s getting so we can’t keep stuff from each other like we used to, so guess we’re both lucky i let alphys get in my head about it.” He glances at you. “how’d those two weeks go by? regular like, or nah?”

“Like nah,” you say tersely.

“heh,” he replies humorlessly. “had a feeling.”

“We have to learn how to be careful _all over_ again,” you complain. You don’t want to hurt him, you don’t want him to hurt you. You miss him so much it feels like it’s killing you.

“it’s been like this ever since the barrier opened,” he says, a seeming non sequitur that you know isn’t. “it just keeps going, like there’s no end to it. but i guess if we keep heading in this direction long enough, it’s got to at some point, right?”

You watch his eyes follow something else higher and higher, his cervical vertebrae flexed by magic as he cranes his neck back. He’s not really bothering to play it off anymore at all, is he?

“unless frisk decides it won’t, i guess,” he says after another minute.

“Are you telling me this because you feel bad?” you ask, dubious and hesitant.

“nope,” he replies tersely after a long moment. After another he continues, much to your surprise.

“frisk said they want your help some more,” he grunts expressionlessly.

“With what?”

He doesn’t look at you.

“not sure yet,” he answers. “ _they’re_ not sure yet,” he clarifies grudgingly.

“I don’t know,” you sigh. “I hate to say it, but I’m starting to think they feel like we’re closer or something because we hurt each other.”

He glances at you sharply.

“You should know what I mean,” you point out. “It was basically the judgement hall all over again, and I really should have seen that coming. I know what those kind of patterns mean, and how they can suck you right into them if you’re not careful.” You sigh. “I wasn’t careful, and we all got hurt. I feel responsible, I guess. Not like it’s my _fault_ , but still… responsible. I don’t know. Maybe I’m worried they just want to keep me around, and they think this is the way to do it? Like, are they worried we’ll break up or something?”

He’s looking at you strangely.

“don’t think that’s it,” he says slowly, mitten rubbing at his chin.

“What else could it be?” you counter dismissively.

He exhales heavily after a protracted silence.

“they said you know the right thing to do,” he half-growls, sounding even more unhappy about it. Unfortunately, you know exactly what he means. What _Frisk_ means.

“Wh-” the air feels knocked out of your lungs. “What?” you manage to squawk on the second attempt. “No? I don’t?? Why the hell do they think that?”

He aims the points in his sockets at you miserably. “cause ya do,” he grunts.

“Apparently you’re both out of your goddamn minds.”

“nope,” he sighs, shoulders slumping. “think about it. you take what you know, make a decision that works. or you don’t have to think about it, you just _do_ it. whatever’s right, you don’t wait to ask somebody. wouldn’t matter if you promised; wouldn’t matter if it hurt you, gotcha in trouble. like with the, what was it? that message with the information you sent all those people?” He looks at you evenly, and you flush a little.

“I didn’t get in trouble,” you mutter.

“wouldn’t matter, though. you still woulda done it. frisk hurt you, and you forgave em. cause it was the right thing for _you_ to do.” he exhales wearily. “might not a been for someone else, but it was for you, an i knew it.”

You press your lips together because you can’t really argue with that, but you notice he’s glancing at you surreptitiously.

“What?” you blurt reluctantly.

“not saying you always _do_ the right thing,” he shrugs uncomfortably. “not sayin’ _that_. jus’...you know what it is, much as anyone can. that’s not much but it’s… not usual,” he says before his voice chokes off.

His eyes dart at you some more, and your mouth gets dry at the expression on his face. You wish you hadn’t brought up the judgement hall.

“i‘m sayin... i _know_ you know what it is,” he rumbles miserably, and meets your eyes just in time for a long, excruciatingly fraught silence.

“cause i can’t _not_ know that bout people,” he rasps, sockets close to empty.

You start to hyperventilate a little, then turn it into a bracing inhale that just doesn’t seem to end.

When it finally does, you hold it for a minute while he looks at you like you might start screaming. But all you do is let it out in a long, slow raspberry which changes his expression considerably.

You wipe the spit off your lips with the back of your hand.

“Well, that’s fucking horrible and I hate it,” you bark.

His eye sockets change shape. “me too,” he admits, almost managing a real smile.

You hold out your hand to him a little stiffly. “I still feel okay. Buy me dinner,” you demand, wiggling your hand a bit.

Now he _is_ confused enough to smile. “uh, what did-”

“Just take me to fucking _Grillby’s_ , Sans,” you sigh, and he finally takes your impatient fingers with his bare bones and a quiet _heh_.

 


	26. acquired tastes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> here it is
> 
> my favorite chapter  
> again
> 
> The Jayhawks - Blue  
>  https://youtu.be/Z9mJ69Tqh84

You don’t let go of his hand at Grillby’s, not even to eat.

You don’t let go of his hand while he shoots the shit in a more subdued way than usual, and even the most tenacious regulars depart with a nod and a smile.

You keep his fingers in your grip while he waves at Grillby, and when you open your eyes back at your place, you squeeze his bones and lead him upstairs.

You stare at the floor as you trail him after you until you finally turn around, sit on your bed and look up at him pleadingly. His face changes as he takes you in, and he slides his fingers out of yours but only so he can bring both of his hard, flexible hands up to your face. Distal phalanges trace your cheeks, push above your ears and into your hair. Down the back of your neck for soothing touches. Your eyelids flutter, but don’t close as you bite back a whine.

“sorry,” he breathes. “sorry.”

“I miss you,” you whisper tightly.

“told myself i had to give you time to think about it,” he says quietly as he strokes your back, starts to kneel between your legs on the triangle of mattress between them. “didn’t wanna affect your decision one way or the other.” His grin flattens in chagrin. “but i _know_ better. like i told you,” he continues as he lays you back, knees lurching over each of your thighs until he straddles your body, until his face is only inches from yours. His sockets are so dark, and the points in them tremble uncertainly.

“but i was embarrassed,” he whispers, and his gaze firms. “bout how i get when i don’t… don’t feel right,” he adds, and you feel a hesitation. He’s stroking your face with the backs of his fingers. “that i asked you to touch me like that, and even when you didn’t i just laid there and took it all, didn’t even...” He trails off, makes a quiet noise as he traces your face with his nasal bone.

“You’re not selfish,” you assert, and put your arms around him. Wow, he feels good. You can feel his hard spine flexing under your hands beneath his sweater, his shirt. “You _know_ me,” you whisper, earning a slight shiver from him. “You know I love touching you. You let me do what I wanted to do.” You use the inside of your forearms to press at his hips.

“you made it better ‘stead a worse,” he whispers as he arches under your touch. “but it’s still there, an i don’t know what i want,” he admits quietly.

You raise your arms and bring your fingers to his face, just hold it for a second.

“I can tell you want to. You do, right?”

The points in his sockets shrink.

“yeah,” he answers tightly. “real bad.”

“But you don’t even want me to see it, even though you know I can’t...see it.”

His sockets change shape.

“don’t want you to think i’m gross” he whispers.

You stroke your thumbs just under the grooves below his sockets and meet his eyes firmly.

“I don’t think you’re gross,” you say, and something in him changes. The tension you had been vaguely aware of in his body loosens, and you smile at him hesitantly. He believes you.

“Why don’t we get naked and do whatever we both feel like, even if that’s nothing?” you suggest gently. “You feel good, and I miss it.”

He sighs, looks to the side and smiles back down at you with a much improved expression.

“i could use a little skin on my bones,” he smirks, and relaxes the rest of the way as you roll your eyes.

You and Sans take your clothes off enthusiastically, smiling and unhurried, getting an eyeful. Still, once you embrace again, neither of you can stop throaty sighs of satisfaction at as your bodies tangle and lock together; hard and smooth against hot and soft. You push your face between his jaw and shoulder as he shivers lightly, and his breath grows labored as your lips find sensitive vertebrae. The groan he lets out as your push your tongue against the tight magic in his intervertebral spaces is tense enough to make you draw back a moment.

“Too much?” you ask quietly.

“nah,” he exhales in helpless amusement as you gaze down into the dimly hypnotic cradle of his ribcage. “not enough, maybe. i just...” The delicately stiffened bones of his palm caress the back of your head, your neck. His arms tighten, and his spine curves to press his ribs and pelvis against you. An uneven exhale. “s’like i forgot how good you feel?” he murmurs wonderingly. His other hand finds your hip, presses ceramic-smooth fingertips into soft skin. You open your mouth again to let your tongue seek bone, and to your surprise he keeps talking, soft rumbles as he leans his head back to give you access.

“n-not really like… not _forgetting_ , but,” he sighs as you continue, “but still... _heh..._ nice surprise. every time.”

You hum in agreement as your lips caress his clavicle, and he gasps as your tongue presses the space between it and his first rib. His bones are so thick and heavy, the space is narrower than it might be in a human skeleton.

“you like that spot?” he whispers absently. “me too. ‘s tight.”

You run the flat of your palm over his ribs in the back, press it lightly down his spinal processes and finish the caress holding his iliac crest. His distal phalanges tease along the line of your neck as you let your tongue explore his intercostal spaces close to the sternum. When you press forward a little, he rolls onto his back. Groans a little as you lean your warm body onto his, chest and belly pressing down inside him a little while he murmurs softly in delight.

“hh _heh_ … that’s…” you look up when you hear a rasp as you mouth vaguely at his xiphoid process, but it’s just his ulna gliding across his sockets. He pulls his forearm across his face again, lets it rest there. You can see between the bones.

At this point you feel okay with exploring his body a little. You have a better grasp on how different touches feel for him, on the surface of his bones and between them, too; your tongue explores the tip of his floating rib carefully. “’s really… _hmmm..._ ”

You wonder if his unusually talkative mood is because he’s soul-shy, and maybe he wants to make sure you know it’s…

“Good?” you ask quietly.

“ _yeah_ ,” he sighs fervently.

You rub his ilium with your thumb a little where you hold it.

“Can I try it here?”

He sucks in a breath, and you hear him shiver a little.

“yeah,” he exhales shakily. “jus’ go slow, okay?”

“I will,” you promise softly. “Let me know.”

His hand leaves your shoulder as his other forearm joins the first, crossing over while you slip your face between his ribcage and pelvis to press a gentle, slow kiss to his spine.

“feels real soft,” he slurs, and touches your sides and shoulders with the insides of his femurs encouragingly as you move lower. You hold one for a moment, touch your lips to the inside of the smooth bone gently and hear his breathing roughen. You part your lips and cautiously push your tongue against him. You hear the faint, quiet noise of his spine but he doesn’t shudder against your mouth; you move it up a little and look at him softly for a moment. He seems relaxed and receptive despite holding his arms over his face.

You don’t want to just start lapping at him since his reaction to that’s been so strong before. You run your fingertips over the flat of his ilium; he shudders and sighs as you feel how it curves in and becomes his left superior ramus. He tenses a little as you move your touch further inward, and considering tension is usually not concurrent with pleasure in him, you move your fingers away from his pubis. You run your palm back up and over his iliac crest, then rub it firmly over his lumbar spine, across to the other side. He shivers and sighs pleasantly, but one of his hands comes down and starts hesitantly clicking at his chest.

You press your cheek against his ilium and look up at him, hold the knobby part of his femur on the outside where it joins to become his hip.

“If you want to, you should,” you murmur encouragingly. “It’s okay.”

His forearm rasps across his face again as he takes a few deep breaths. You press your hands against his hips affectionately, rub your cheek against him. He relaxes a little more as you breathe evenly together, and you see him pressing in with purpose as his legs come in again to touch you gently where you recline between them.

He pulls back his fingers, and his delicately iridescent soul follows them. You think he might be looking through the gap in his arm bones, but from this angle you can’t be sure. You smile with joy and pleasure as you gaze into his soul, admiring its beauty despite being unable to see whatever conflict he’s trying to work through. It feels like a long time since you’ve seen it. You feel a blossom of pleasure and awe as he finally curves his fingers to its surface, exhales raggedly. A little more tension leaves him. His sockets close, but his other hand creeps back down to touch your hair, your face.

“if...if you want to...” he whispers thickly, “would you use your mouth instead?”

You feel your own breath coming faster. You wish he’d let you touch his soul because then you would have known to start off that way in the first place, but at least he’s willing to say so. And if you’re honest, it gives you a bit of a thrill to hear him ask for what he wants, too.

“Yeah,” you reply softly. “I’d really like that.”

You press your lips to his iliac crest, open your mouth and let your tongue drag across. He exhales, a hint of his deep voice chasing the breath as it leaves him. His fingers still caress his soul, and more tension leaves his body as you continue. The bone of his thick, broad ilium isn’t as smooth as the outside of his ribcage, nor as almost-porous as the inside of it. You catch a faint ghost of his magic as you glide across the lightly iridescent white surface, and when you inhale you notice the fragrance of his bones, of _him._ Dry and organic, alive. It makes your chest flutter with desire; you feel so close to him. His breath catches as you press your tongue along, drawing up and over the left ramus again, and you hear it explode into panting as you flick it over the smoother area where it curves outward a little. The very tips of his fingers touch your cheek so lightly, you barely feel them.

“easy, easy...” he begs, whispering, sockets closed but furrowed. He’s still touching his soul, fingers spreading now as he soothes himself. His legs come in around you to urge you forward again, but you turn your lips towards his fingertips instead.

“Sans,” you say quietly, and he shivers as your breath hits the moisture you’ve left on him. “I don’t know how this feels for you.” He exhales thoughtfully. He strokes your cheek with his fingertips again, and you take one of them into your mouth, making him inhale sharply. You let it go to whisper, “I just want you to feel good, but I’m worried I’ll hurt you, or... bother you. Maybe it’s better to have souls involved when we try something new.” You bring your hand in to touch the backs of his fingers, press so you can kiss his palm gently. “We don’t have to do it right now. We wanted to try it, and we did. I want it to be nice for you.” You smile, kiss his carpals.

He takes his hand from yours, but only to pull the pillow up behind his head a little more so he can open his sockets and look down at you. Then it comes back down under your chin so he can gaze into your eyes for a long moment, eye lights fuzzed out, sockets pained.

“you.. really want to?” he says quietly after a minute.

You don’t know if he means kissing his bones or touching his soul.

“I love you,” you say instead, surprising you both a little. His face softens.

“me too,” he whispers tightly, a smooth distal phalanx brushing your lower lip. “you wanna touch my soul? keep going?”

“Yeah,” you reply, and even you can hear the yearning in your voice.

“me too,” he repeats. His fingers leave his soul rather than your face, and he touches your chin again as he brings your fingertips up his body. He holds them near his palely glistening self, looks into your eyes again for a long moment, breathing heavily.

“ _love_ you,” he adds in a grunted whisper, and curls your fingers into him. On their own and without his steadying touch, which is why he holds your face gently up away from him as he gasps full-voiced and arches up helplessly. He bites it down into a growl and lies back panting as you contact what’s roiling inside him. You feel it, but you’re not sure you really _know_ it. A lot of it’s desire for more of what you’ve been doing, and even more of it is the same feeling of closeness and intimacy you’d been experiencing yourself. But there's something else further back, and you can feel that he both wants it and doesn’t like it very much.

It fades further as you come in, and oh, he _feels_ you. He trusts you with this, with him, even when he doesn’t like himself. He can’t be all bad if he can love you this much, because you’re so good, and it helps. It really does. He missed you, and this. You’re here, and this makes him feel how _here_ you are. Makes it easier to let some of that go. His labored breathing gets a little steadier, and his strokes his glassy fingertips down your arm, lets his hand come to rest on the bed.

He likes what you’re doing to him a lot, but it can get overwhelming very quickly, because it’s so...so _sensitive_. His pelvic bones are dense and heavy. But rather than making them less responsive, the tensile strength of the magic that holds his bones together here is even more reactive to pressure and presence. Touches from his ilium into the curves of his pubis snowball in intensity even across the surface; fingertips can sometimes feel penetrating, even when they’re not.

And this, in the center where his pubis comes together… this is a _joint_ , and it’s also more than that. It’s his center of gravity, where his momentum gathers or redistributes itself when he moves, transferring the weight of his upright body from his sacrum out to his hips. The magic that holds and supports this joint has more tension than almost anywhere else in his body. It has to, because it bears the strain of and provides the flexibility for every step he takes. It’s his center of balance, the crux around which all of his movements pivot. It’s the core of him.

You hear his faint, panting noises of anticipation as you move your mouth towards it. You leave your tongue as lax as possible, not poking or darting, and just press it softly to the seam where his halves come together. His quiet keen breaks apart as you suddenly taste his magic here, its tingle ghosting into your tongue, sparking and dissipating as he rocks his hips oh so gently towards you.

You’re so _soft_. So good and wet at the center of him.

You turn your head sideways to press your nose and chin to his bones, making sure the slight movements he can’t quite control don’t bring bones in contact with teeth. You brush his soul lightly with your fingers, feel him suppress a shudder while he moans breathlessly. Your other hand comes around to cup the knobby top of his femur where it joins his pelvis, then you move it to the inside and stroke gently. You feel his rush of excitement as he understands what you want.

His legs open and so does his pubic symphysis, just the tiniest bit. The magic here is so tight you can’t actually put your tongue _into_ the space, but you softly press it against the resistance there, question it delicately. Then you flatten your tongue and swipe it across very, very slowly. You can’t get it open any more than it is since your arm’s over his other leg with that hand buried in his soul, and you’re not about to let _that_ go. But holy shit, this is _amazing_.

Shaky, delicate pleasure’s pooling in him so fast he’s reeling, wet heat that feels like it sinks right through his bones, spiked through with delicate concern for this vulnerable place. He’s open for you, and you're being so soft with him. He gives in to the urge to rock his hips forward again, slowly and carefully. It feels so good to meet your lips like this. He loves to be kissed, and he wants you to know. He’s not trying to stop the sobs it wrings from him now, your easy, hot tongue contrasting with the raw intensity of your presence in his soul. His magic flows everywhere, from his sockets, between his legs. He doesn’t want it to stop.

You move your tongue outward, caressing the arches of his pubis on either side, using your lips to press loose kisses up and back toward the center. You run your tongue up the length of his pubic symphysis this time and he almost chokes with bliss; you run it back down and he sobs his breath back out roughly. So soft, so good, not like it’s going to split his pelvis right in half while he begs for more. Not like it’s going to press right through his body, weight shoving against him until it leaves a mess he’ll have to clean out of his spine and it’s breaking like he deserves and _he wants it_ -

He gasps in discomfort, and suddenly you feel his fingers beside yours, pushing in and calming him. You move your mouth away from him carefully, lean up to look at him as he pants and tries to focus his eyes. You feel a light ghost of sorrow as you both realize he’s getting overwhelmed, and something’s coming through that makes him feel...not great. But he wants it; he _wants_ it. Another wave of disgust rushes through him, curdling his pleasure and sharpening it mercilessly at the same time. He shudders with arousal and aversion; you feel a brush of apologetic disappointment. With a sigh and a gentle and practiced motion, Sans crosses his fingers so that his smooth bones caress up the inside of yours, straightening them until both of you have a hand cupped around his soul, no longer touching it.

Despite this, you both crave closeness and help each other lean up into a sitting position, legs entwined and facing each other. He still holds your hand with his, not touching his soul but not putting it back, either. You’re not exactly sure what bothers him so much about the way he feels, but he obviously doesn’t want you to see it very clearly. Your foreheads touch, and you both gaze down into his troubled, inverted heart, breathing evenly together and stroking each other lightly.

You press your fingers against his skull the way he likes, kiss his forehead. He exhales shakily, leans into you more until only the width of your cupped hands keeps your chests apart, his soul still luminescent and frail between you.

“It’s okay,” you say softly into the secret space between your bodies. “We can stop, or keep going.”

“i dunno,” he sighs quietly. “something's wrong with me. that probably doesn’t feel too good for you, huh.”

You roll your forehead lightly against his. Then you reach down and take his other hand from your hip and slowly bring it up to your own chest, lean back just a little. You could _show_ him how you feel about touching his soul.

You whisper, “I was thinking maybe we could try this out, so you’d know that for sure. See how _we_ feel.” His breath catches a little, then he exhales softly. You caress his face with yours and he closes his sockets hesitantly, turns his face up to be kissed while he thinks about it.

“hmmm,” he says quietly, then rolls his face into your neck, leans into you. “can’t say i don’t want that,” he whispers a little shakily. “cause i _do_. a lot. but...”

He shudders a little, and his hand shifts. You think he might be brushing his own soul, just a little. He wants to know how he feels. “i messed myself up, maybe,” he sighs, presses his smooth-and-textured face against your bare, hot skin. “long time ago. comes back hard when i don’t… feel right.”

He’s quiet a minute. “didn’t want you to have to feel that part of it,” he admits, pressing his face into you a little more.

You smile gently, stroke the neutral bone of his skull. “But I don’t _have_ to feel anything. This doesn’t work like that, remember? It’s up to us. We can do anything we want, and nothing we don’t.” You think about how to say it. “You know I’m not using you to make me feel a certain way, and you’re not using me to feel a certain way. You’re not taking anything from anyone, you’re...showing me this. Whatever feels good for _both_ of us, that’s what we’ll do. Even if that’s nothing. Does that make sense?”

He hums into you. “when you say it i believe you. yeah? yeah. makes me wanna try.” You glance down and see his finger draw away from touching his soul, moving to cup it protectively instead. His phalanges glide over your chest searchingly.

“you sure?” he asks.

“I’m sure,” you smile, and he moves his face from your neck so his forehead can rest against yours, curves his body out to make a small space between you, coaxes his soul close to his body. His breathing roughens again, and you feel him gathering your soul inside you, drawing and calling sweetly until it emerges eagerly to chase the potential of his touch. What he sees there makes him exhale raggedly, his legs shifting a little under yours as if he wants to tighten them, pull you both together. He seems twice as eager as he was hesitant before; now he’s having to hold himself back a little.

It’s the first time both of your souls have been out at once, and the iridescence in his reflects the deep blue of yours, one point up, the other point down. You can see his pale glow illuminating your blue. Oddly enough, some of the patterns you know well in your own soul seem to reflect something in his, something you can’t actually see. It’s so beautiful, and so... _intense_. The sight twists inside you strangely. You can’t look away, and you hear your own shaky moan.

“gotta be careful now,” he whispers reverently, and you trust that if care needs to be taken, he’ll take it.

“i’m… i’m _good_ at this part,” he adds a bit breathlessly. “can i show you?” He traces the line of your cheek with his nasal bone, and you feel his shuddering breath against your lips. “i can get _real_ close,” he whispers, harsh and thick. You give him your hands. His voice is low, confident, passionate. “but still safe. you’ll feel it. jus’...”

His phalanges are winding with your fingers in a complicated pattern, bending impossibly and guiding their movements finely, precisely. You think some of your fingers might even be between the bones of his palms, and you relax into the way he’s holding them. “...like this. that good with you?” he checks again, then moans lightly into your mouth as you press a hot kiss against his fixed grin.

“Yeah,” you gasp, tasting your excited heartbeat.

“same time okay?” he pants, curving your hands together so they each cup your souls, thumbs coming between them. “or is that gonna be too much?”

You squeeze him lightly with your legs, up over his femurs and wrapped loosely around his pelvis. “I trust you,” you reply, sincerity quivering in your voice as you let your fingers relax further in his grip. “I can’t wait for you to show me how you like it.”

“ _stars_ ,” he whispers tightly. You hear bones kiss each other softly from deep in his body.

“i’m gonna make it so good for you,” he rumbles deliciously, and right now his breath feels almost hot against your face. You hum in eager anticipation, open your eyes to gaze into his sockets. The points that float there have fuzzed and dimmed, nearly fill the darkness with their textured not-glow. His fingers tense gently, and you can feel that you’ll both be touching yourselves and each other at the same time, initiating contact all at once. “ready?” he whispers, and you hum fervent agreement one last time, his shallow, excited breath caressing your lips. “here it comes,” he breathes shakily.

Then it _does_ , just like plunging suddenly into a deep, warm pool of each other.

The immersion is so complete you both buckle forward against each other and groan dazedly, but his fingers are steady and confident in keeping everything where it’s supposed to be, the backs of his hands braced between your chests. For a moment you have a little difficulty catching your breath because his presence is so immediate, but so is yours in him and you feel that too and it’s so- _it’s so much_ -

He moves a little, presenting you to yourself somehow. It’s steadying, reminds you that you didn’t go anywhere, you’re right here with him. You’re okay. This must be how he soothes himself when he starts to feel overwhelmed, and he knows how to do it for you. He gives you a minute and nuzzles your face gently, strokes his legs against yours a tiny bit. He’s right here with you, and he feels so close to you. You both shudder as he brushes his thumb down between your souls, touching both. You can feel them resonating through the bones he keeps between them. Feels good, doesn’t it. Safe, and oh so _close_. For some reason this sends a subversive thrill through him and into you, and it reflects back even though you don’t understand its source.

The way he makes his tiny adjustments makes you think of him working, makes you think of playing an instrument perfectly, precise etched movements that steal your breath and fill you with awe. You love his skilled, careful fingers so much; the way his hands work has fascinated and thrilled you for so long.

You feel a tender fernlike feeling uncurl in him; he’s flattered and pleased by your regard. He feels it, and he lets you know. Something blooms in you; the way your face looks to him right now, dazed with bliss, softened with love. _Beautiful._ The rush he feels that you trust him with this, even after what happened before. _Courageous._

You smile at the confidence he feels doing this with you, and he smiles too. When there’s some stuff you _don’t_ do, you get a lot of practice doing the stuff you like. And oh, he _likes_ this. He wants you to like it too. A disorganized rush of love and trust pours out of you, and the pleasure he feels from that reverberates between you, leaving you both gasping.

You’ve been pulling each other closer with your legs bit by bit; you’re almost in his lap but not quite. He feels the warmth from your body close to his pelvis there, your legs pressing down on his femurs. Another adjustment; the pressure stays enjoyable, it feels like _you_. He opens his legs a little more, and you slide down into the gap before his legs pull you right back in.

Your soft thighs push in a little between his pelvis and ribcage, and he thrills at it. The heat between your legs is close to his pubis though, and you feel his soul a little more as he pushes you both in, dissipating another echo of his earlier discomfort for now. It’s not gone, just muted. You reassure him that it doesn’t hurt you. He’s calming himself _with_ himself, and you, and this. He likes this, he _knows_ this, and it’s good. It doesn't hurt him.

He rolls his face against your collarbone, then tilts it up because he wants you to kiss him some more. His sockets list half-shut and his grin is soft and open; a rush of trust. A melting feeling; he _loves_ to be kissed. You really gave him a _taste_ for it. Both of you exhale in amusement, then moan a little as the enjoyment of his little joke intensifies between you.

You bring your lips against his zygomatic arch, his orbitals. Your mouth opens along his jawline, a light press of tongue where his mandible is fused. A rush of complicated feelings and a deep, almost subvocal coo; a bead of magic falls on your shoulder, tingles down your chest a little.

He adjusts your hands together, now with only thin bones between your souls, hands cupped outside and pressing in. So slightly. He rolls forward against you again, groaning brokenly into your neck as another wave of _so close,_ _oh_ _stars_ _don’t you feel it_ rolls through him deliciously.

Touching each other’s souls and your own at the same time feels so directed and yet incredibly immersive. You’re picking up a lot on how this works as he shows you how it makes him feel. You open yourself a little more, love and heat and protectiveness and care and yearning almost gurgling up to show itself to him. He gasps as a thin thread of your physical arousal adds itself to the rush where he touches you. You hesitate and pull back little; you don’t know if he wants those feelings right now.

He rubs his smooth teeth against the line of your jaw. It’s okay. Maybe just a little for now. Just a taste, and it gives him an idea. The loosely woven cage of his fingerbones delicately coaxes your middle finger free and guides it to push smoothly in between where your souls hover so near each other, penetrating the space between two thin phalanges and touching both souls at the same time. You grit your teeth as you feel another stronger wave of arousal, and he shakes with it too. His hands stay firm and steady despite it as you press closer instinctively. He rests his face in your neck again and slowly teases your finger back out, and you relax and let him reevaluate and decide what’s going where with a smile. Maybe that was a little much for right now, but you concentrate on showing him how the longing goes full and sweet. That feels more familiar to him, feels _good_ once it settles. He brings his face up to press his teeth against your cheek and sighs contentedly.

He wants to show you just how close he can bring you, if you want it. You moan softly with his yearning. You don’t know why he responds like that, but you feel it. A faint citrus note of surprise. Don’t worry, he won’t let your souls touch no matter how you both _want_ them to, but he can make you _feel_ like they might, like they’re going to, even though he won’t. It’s safe, it’s _good_. Excitement prickles through him just at the thought. Do you want it?

You _do_.

“nnnnhhh,” he breathes raggedly, mostly unable to form anything coherent when you’re so entwined with each other. His bones spread, your fingers moving down into what must be his metacarpals as he changes their position yet again without losing any points of contact that he wants to maintain. The only thing between your souls is just his thumb, resting at the very edge.

His breathing is shaky and a little labored as you feel his love and desire for closeness with you swell. He coaxes your souls toward each other until both touch his thumb tip, then he tilts them around this axis impossibly _closer_. His voice decorates his every exhalation, and another wave of almost dangerous-seeming pleasure courses through him, and you too now. It’s like you can barely tell the difference anymore, and it’s _so good_. You know he can get even closer than this, but he holds you both steady for now. His teeth press smoothly along your jawline again as his legs tighten subconsciously, your bodies reflecting the resonant yearning to touch that your souls are experiencing.

His nonexistent throat clicks when his pubis touches the wet heat between your legs, and he sucks in a strangled breath. The near-mechanical precision of his hands doesn’t falter, but you can feel something like alarm-blooms-to-pleasure pooling in him suddenly and maybe you too. So close but not touching, then the contrast of where you _can_ touch to generate closeness and pleasure from each other, _with_ each other. The possibility sends another subversive thrill through both of you.

He moans wordlessly, tilting his hips toward you. He wants to rub together there, it feels so good and soft, like your mouth had. At the same time, he’s afraid to provoke the kind of feelings in himself that had interrupted before, because this is already so good now. It makes him happy to show you how close he can bring your souls together, something he knows will make you feel good, and he feels it too. Your souls are already so close he can’t really stop you from knowing that kind of rubbing is something he’s let humans do to him before, but never like _this_ , not even close to feeling like he does now.

You want it too, but you worry that too much of your physical arousal will come into it and overwhelm the nuanced, exquisite experience you’re already having. But...yes. His bones and magic press you again, lightly exploring the possibilities. You feel warmth and desire, but nothing urgent. This isn’t a sharp feeling. When you think about how much you trust him, it unexpectedly helps you relax into how this feels for _him_ , pooling and holding, being filled with shivering delight rather than chasing after more and more.

What if he chose the way you’d touch, like he holds your hands and souls? Keep it how it is now, patient, slow, and close. He wouldn’t be letting you do something to him, he’d be exploring it. It’d be the same way he knew he’d be able to make touching souls at the same time feel this good, and he can’t not _care_. You feel a slightly wicked smile bloom in him; he likes that you both remember what he said. You’re not even a hundred percent sure whose ideas are whose, but you’re on the same page regardless.

His clever fingers go to work again, and you realize he’s in the process of freeing one hand for each of you without losing any points of contact... and also without dislocating any of your fingers. You smile in amusement; how thoughtful of him. For a guy who talks while he’s talking, he’s really got a talent for joking while silent. He has to stop for a moment as a rush of love and pleasure makes it hard to concentrate, but he manages to finish switching to one hand quickly after that, pained brow flexing against yours as he breathes raggedly with desire.

He snakes one bony arm around your back, caressing your nape with his fingers encouragingly. He bends your other arm at the elbow, guiding you gently until your joined hands and separate but oh-so-close souls hover protected beside your neck. You reach down for his hip, and he steadies you as you lay back slowly, allowing him to position himself over you with one leg between yours and one outside. You smile again because he’s not entirely sure how this is going to work, but he plans to have a lot of fun figuring it out and hopes you will, too.

Turns out he can push one of your legs up and hold it there with his femur, then just lay down right on top of you with his skull resting on your shoulder. He can also turn his head to gaze steadily right into the bone-and-flesh cage of hands securing and penetrating both your souls... while feeling them resonate together in your pressed-together chests at the same time. Wow. Oh, _wow_. It was worth it _just for this_ , and his sockets list and almost flutter as massive, sloppy pleasure sloshes through him, and then you. It amuses him that you think of it that way, that you _feel_ it that way. Messy. It feels like _him_ ; it suits you. Like you suit him.

With a long, vocal sigh he slides his pubic symphysis across the wet heat between your legs, brushing the backs of his glassy-smooth phalanges across your cheek. Your free hand comes up and touches his bones again, finds a good spot to hold and guide him, just in case. He relaxes into your grip as he decides that feels good, too.

As you both experiment with different movements and touches, you notice the differences in how this feels for each of you. What he has is definitely not genitalia; if the hard, less-than-warm bone of it didn’t tell you that already, the deeper-than-skin tingle of his magic would. For him it’s just a sensitive and important part of his body, and you both pause and shudder as something familiar echoes through you this time. He caresses the back of your neck soothingly when he considers that doing this, he has to be careful because you’re equally sensitive but so much softer, so vulnerable beneath his hard bones.

Your hand on his pelvis gently guides him to where it feels best for you, but rather than building tension you try and relax, discover you can borrow deeply from his feelings to find yourself at a rolling, undemanding plateau. You feel like you could stay like this forever. You smile even as you moan in delight because he appreciates how little actual exertion is involved in this for him. It’s almost restful.

You both giggle a little at the thought of this being the best nap you’ve never taken together, and then another wave of almost mischievous desire tickles in him. He angles your souls around his thumb just the tiniest fraction closer…a fraction of about _half_ the distance previous, which is apparently a _lot_. You both moan in a slightly higher register than usual for either of you as what you’re feeling blends and mingles even closer. Like _he’s_ what’s sloshing around inside you, like you feel the edges of him where he contains you. At this point you’re both making a significant mess where you rub together lazily, your heat and moisture delighting him, his magic feeling like something that drips right through and into your flesh, because… oh, apparently that is _exactly_ what it does. Oh.

He wants you to know he can halve the distance _again_ , if you’d like.

It makes him feel good to know that he’s skilled at this, that he can give you so much right now and do it safely. You’re not actually in any danger of choking on your own spit, but the possibility of even more makes you wonder if you could manage it. He rubs his forehead against your chin soothingly, but you kind of have to admit you’re curious what kind of zeno’s paradox he has in store for you.

Yes, you want it. Go ahead.

He does, and your eyes go a little more unfocused along with his. The sensation of immersion in each other increases, and your movements become even slower, messier. Still, a thread of caution and control remains in him, and you know it keenly because you’re so incredibly close. You can almost feel how he knows _exactly_ how far apart he’s holding your essential selves down to a microscopic level, the same way you can tell blue from yellow, or a knife from a fork. But you still have no idea why it’s so important to keep them apart, and apparently he can pick up on that a little more accurately now since a rush of gentle amusement fills him.

Sure, maybe he helped raise a kid, but that wasn’t his idea and he still has a hard time thinking of himself as a parent. Not that he even knows if he’s capable of procreating, but it’s not a chance he’s willing to take. You can feel him huffing slow, amused breaths along your neck, even as you both loll and moan at the intensity of the experience you’re sharing. It’s funny, and you laugh too wondering if he knows something you don’t. Because humans and monsters _can’t have_ kids together, and that’s something even monsters never bothered to keep a secret.

You both nuzzle at each other feeling bemused, and _a_ mused, and _con_ fused, filled almost to overflowing with each other. You feel understanding of what you mean dripping little by little through you and into him like a sieve, because that’s how close you are right now, feeling, almost thinking together like you might be if your souls actually _touched_ each other, can you even _imagine_ if they touched each other. If you could touch souls together like that, without worrying.

can you

even.

_imagine._

… _._ _t_ _hat._  
Something wild and uncontrolled saturates Sans like a dye packet thrown into boiling water, and you both arch and squawk desperately, half-shut eyes widening in unison and you try to cope with whatever this feeling is. You grit your teeth against the sound-memory of shattering glass and slow, insistent growling hot along your neck. But he’s almost all you can feel, and he’s utterly filled with _this_ , it’s so strong, stronger than anything you’ve felt from him before, and so _sudden_ , it’s…

You feel him gasp raggedly against you, and his thumb quickly and carefully pushes a little more space between your souls to try and ease this but it’s...it’s inevitable, and he _can’t_ , and you’re...oh god oh god-

Sans quickly leans up on his free hand and does his best to rock you as slowly as possible through your climax on his pubis, and his sockets clench shut as he manages to push a long, low hiss through his teeth.

“fffffuu _uuuck_ ,” he cries desperately, the single word forced out like a talisman for control followed by sharp, wordless sobbing as his magic flows down the grooves under his sockets. It patters on your skin as you hold him steady at the hip, wailing a little apologetically as he grinds down onto you. The sheer physicality of it tenses his body more than he’s used to, and it takes all his concentration not to push in several different senses of the word. As far as orgasms go, it’s a good thing this one is fairly diffuse and slow-rolling, borrowed heavily from his feelings and apparently prompted by them as well.

That might be what tilts the balance for control in his favor, since he can’t really afford to let your souls go right this chaotic second, and he very much does _not_ want to push any magic into either of you right now. It seems that what your peak lacks in intensity it decides to make up for by lasting a very, very long time. Sans eventually collapses to his elbow with another cry, panting and moaning as the waves crashing over you finally ebb a little. You can feel his bones tremble as he rearranges himself back down onto you as carefully as he can.

Your souls aren’t as close as they were, but you both still feel slightly dazed and apologetic toward each other; him for choosing possibly the worst time to have a ‘conversation’ like that (and the fact that the feelings it caused in him haven’t actually gone anywhere), and you for subjecting him to another orgasm without warning, not that you could necessarily help it.

As you breathe together, he still doesn’t let go or pull away. That one wasn’t sharp, was much more like something he could get used to. Scary-sudden, but that’s on him. You come to the shared conclusion that you’d both actually enjoyed that _a lot_ , and considering there’s really no need to feel apologetic anymore, you stop.

He’s wondering if maybe he could bring your souls closer again now, and you think about it. He came back down straddling you since he can tell you don’t want any more rubbing, so he’s just gazing into your souls and enjoying your thigh in his pubic arch again. He can already feel your warm, satisfied glow, and you don’t mind his now-more-controlled desire and excitement, either. You’d like that.

The dramatically increased closeness washes through you both, pressing a satisfied sigh out of each of you. It turns out what he wants you to know, even in this indirect way, is that he has to work the day after tomorrow. He’d been desperate not to push any magic into himself because he’d been worried that if he’d caused a peak of sensation like that to linger in him, as powerfully as it had for you… he _might not have made it_.

He starts chuckling vaguely.

He’d miss work because _he’s still having an orgasm_.

Now you’re laughing too, and it just keeps getting funnier. You get an impression of him reading some kind of list of figures, having them swim in his vision because he’s coming, and it’s not even his, he’s having _your_ orgasm two days later because he lost control for a split second.

Not like he’d be able to go in like that, oh no. But it’d be the most _him_ thing ever, wouldn’t it? Called out coming to work. It’d been a bit different for you, but in the end it had been almost a week before you’d stopped feeling the effects of the magic he’d pushed in your soul that first time, oh man. Now you’re both laughing almost drunkenly, you’re wiping tears and magic off on each other. It’s messy and funny and sexy and silly and a little nasty, just like both of you.

You rub your wet faces together and sigh, expending your amusement with little lilting moans. You slowly realize that _this_ is actually the kind of feeling you would want to take with you. Satisfaction, comfort, joy. Him too, and he feels a rush of love and excitement. A blooming of agreement, a pull of yearning.

Do you want him to? He could probably do you both at the same time like this, just a little. Not too much, not anything crazy. He’ll do it like he does himself, draws it out slow and full, tiny bit at a time. Just a little good feeling to hold on to inside after you both let go.

Desire wells up in you enough to push your breath out again. Oh, _yes_. You want him to show you the way he likes it.

He brings your joined hands up under your faces, uses the outside of a finger to tilt your chin so you can kiss him. He runs his nasal bone along your jaw, tickles your lips a little with it, then looks deeply into your eyes for a moment. You feel the swelling resonance building inside both of you; the shape of his sockets grows gently pained as you repeat your openmouthed kiss along his jaw. You end it with the press of tongue at the fused joint for the reward of his complexity, his rounded, shuddering exhalation. You push hot and blunt into the parts he doesn’t like to look at, innocently wringing pleasure from him there. He can’t bear it; he loves it.

He tilts your souls even closer, and the softly poignant yearning he feels intensifies as his breathing gets ragged against your lips yet again. The closeness helps him share how this feels _physically_ good to him. He wants you to know. Different like this, easy and gentle but oh so deep, not being wrung out by sensations more intense than he was necessarily built to handle. A tinge of excitement; this is part of it, building up so you know it’s coming… this is how _he_ likes it. Be patient; it’s coming.

Feels good coming out, good going in. You feel it? You ready? God, yes. Here it comes.

His breath gushes out as he coaxes his magic forth into himself with how much you’d enjoyed this together, feeling satisfied and intimate and relaxed, and the rush of him fills you, too. Maybe it’s the fact that you’re still embedded in each other but you’re so much more aware this time that it’s _him_ that’s flowing into you. Not just good feelings but a distinct sense of his essential qualities, and oh….that…is... _nice_.

It soothes you while it pushes the joy and intimacy you’d shared together deep into you, holding them there firmly to make an impression. A stamp of emotions and sensations traced delicately by unyielding bone fingertips. You hear your breath rush out soft and satisfied because he’s so leisurely and precise, so delicate and full.

_You love him so much._

You hear the sound he makes too, and there’s an unexpectedly plaintive note. This always reminds him of the things he likes about himself, and he never realized _you_ could react to him like this. This isn’t something he’s shared, but everything about doing this with you feels right to him. He didn’t know he would experience your satisfaction, the amplified reflection of his own pleasure, and he didn’t... _oh_.

He can’t believe it feels this good to _share_ it. He can’t bear to stop just yet; he can stop right away if you want him to. The feeling’s more than expected but not the magic. This is how he likes it- slow and careful, deliciously deep but only the smallest _amount_ so far. His eye lights tremble, and his breath shakes out over your lips. It’s so good, can you believe it? Can you take a little more? Do you want him?

You think about how he opened for your tongue, moaning and spicy-wet. You want to give him everything, and you want everything he has to give you.

Another, tighter sound comes from him as he extends it, twining what you feel together and slipping it under the magic to push it farther into both of you. His bones don’t tense, but his body comes up straddling you, curves over you protectively as he brings your souls up higher, almost at your lips, then to the side a little. He’d been stroking the back of your neck encouragingly with his free hand, but now he adds it to what he’s doing, coaxing another soft noise from you. His forehead touches yours and rolls them to the side so you can watch what he does to both of you together, fingers sliding in and against each other, curving and pushing.

This feels so complex, punctuated with soft clacks like lace bobbins raveling emotions and sensations together inside you, pricked patterns laid with bone pins. He exhales softly as he twines you around them to push your pleasure into himself earnestly, shamelessly. He teases out and pushes in threads of his love for you, the way you move, the way things hold your interest. The joy he feels when you laugh. The way you smelt fears and forge shame into trust, the alchemy you command by your nature. Rasp; clack. So courageous and generous. So strong and careful. He wants you to know.

He’s looking at your face, into your soul with ecstasy and disbelief as he adds how you love him, love how he _feels_ in you; he’s astounded that there can be something this physically pleasurable that also feels natural to him. In his soul, in his body. His body knows what to do, lavish and unhurried. Feels good coming out, good pushing in. A shared push that he never imagined could be so… so _close_.

You’re yearning towards him; his precision doesn’t flag even as his sockets close as he tilts your souls as close as he can without touching… without _becoming_.

He fills you, and you love him so much you can taste it.

He feels it, voice shuddering out of him helplessly for you to inhale, return to him in a soft moan.

_You’re so close._

Magic beads on his skull, flows from his sockets, and he ducks his face away so it doesn’t fall into your eyes. It’s not like he can hide what this is doing to him, anyway. But it’s just...a place that always aches in him is unexpectedly soothed; not healed or anything, just found and touched kindly by you and the self you’ve shared with him. He doesn’t know how his magic in your soul can feel _that_ good to you, can barely believe how much you _want_ him there; his indivisibly divided body made continuous with your most essential being. That leaves its impression too, like the opposite of a scar he can carry inside even longer.

He can’t help but give just a little more to each of you with a final quiet hiccup, then he leans up and loosens his hold carefully with a final lingering brush of his fingers.

Each of you press your souls back where they go, then moan softly in unison as they flood back through you brimming with magic, love, and pleasure. You part and scramble to grope back into each other’s arms, gripping tightly and breathing hard at first, then even. You’re so close, his spine’s actually pressed between your thighs and you’re curved around him tightly, lips pressed to his skull.

In sync.

_You still feel it._

His magic tingles against you, and once in a while you feel a quiet sob shake him, or he grips your flesh tightly with his thin, hard fingers. You shiver lightly because he’s all you want to smell, see, touch or taste ever again, and right now it feels like that could happen if you can just hold him enough. This isn’t postcoital; it’s not _post_ -anything. It’s still happening, has been and will be. Timeless like the inside of skulls and souls.

Nothing about how you feel makes it hard to think, though. He might not have intended it, but he’s shared so much of himself with you that you’ve got a pretty good sense now of how he thinks he messed himself up. And it’s not the disgust or discomfort you’d felt before that makes you understand; those are feelings you would have ascribed to some kind of latent desire for pain or roughness, maybe being ashamed of wanting it.

It’s his positive responses that make you realize the experiences he’d had, combined with the reasons he’d sought them out had eventually caused him to have a sexual response to… hating himself, basically.

They’d shown him something he didn’t like about himself, and not liking himself made him want them more and more. Maybe after long enough, all he had to do was hate himself to feel that way.

You suppose he’d learned too late that human souls don’t need to be exposed to have an effect on his body, his magic. But he’s smart enough to realize that those feelings didn’t necessarily originate from the humans he’d thoughtlessly fucked and let fuck him. But they could make thoughts, sensations, and emotions physical for him in ways he had no way to know were possible. No wonder he’d been afraid to let humans touch him for so long, decided they were just incompatible that way.

Your mouth goes a little dry when you consider how that could make someone like him eventually… unravel. Well, not _him_. Just some other unhappened Sans that he’ll carry around inside him forever.

But sometimes things just happen a certain way, and they’re not really anyone’s fault.

“Hey,” you whisper softly into bone. “You felt it in me, too, right?”

He knows you know, but you feel him nod anyways.

“ **People can’t _be_ ruined. Souls can’t be ruined. That’s not a thing that can happen. _It’s not real_.”**

It’s true whether he believes it or not.

“i believe you,” he whispers softly into your skin.

You stay that way for a long time.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bobbin Lacemaking: https://youtu.be/64Dj1dDR6tw
> 
> Not to overexplain but I’m literally inventing emotions and physical sensations at this point so I figured this might help. It’s also just interesting and probably surprising if you don’t know what historical lacemaking looks or sounds like. Anyhoo hope you enjoyed this session of Advanced Monsterfucking Techniques for Thoughtful Adults Part 6: You Don't Have to Be In Love for Extended Scissoring with Eldritch Horrors But It Helps


	27. classified noods

“Sans is a really good p-person,” Alphys stutters quietly. “He got me through some of the worst t-t-times of my life because he was the one I c-could tell everything to. And he didn’t judge me, you know? Well,” she laughs a little nervously, “I’m sure he _did_ , b-but you know what I mean.”

You watch the rain melting snowdrifts out the window of Alphys’s sensible magic-powered sedan for a moment after she finishes speaking. She’d picked you up from work after texting you this morning, and since it’s her you already suspected this isn’t just a social call. Instead of taking you right home or anywhere else, she’d actually parked her car a little ways out of town after a brief discussion with you. It had surprised you when she flipped open the dashboard of her car to reveal a panel with a hotplate, but technically she’d invited you to lunch, and she’s now using it to boil water for instant noodles.

“Yeah,” you reply slowly. “I think I do.”

Alphys pulls a lever and shoves the driver’s seat down into a flat platform. She turns to face you, leaning her curved back against the door of the car, and brings her hands up to sign at you.

“The glass in the windows makes it harder to see in here, even though anyone who might be out there couldn’t tell you exactly why,” she says a little smugly. “I don’t want us to be overheard.”

You can’t help but return her smile. The more time you spend with her, the more you find you actually like her. There’s something refreshing about her mannerisms, and the way you can tell she wants you to like her. She doesn’t try to hide it.

“We’re doing more monster e-s-p-i-o-n-a-g-e?” you say teasingly, but her face grows solemn.

She looks to the side with hooded eyes, then back with a sigh. “Yes, I suppose we are. I want to tell you some things I know Sans won’t, but I...” her clawed fingers slow uncertainly, then continue. “I want to tell you _why_ he won’t tell you. Why other people end up telling you the things he won’t. I’ve known him for a very long time. You understand why I can’t even say for sure how long?”

You incline your head and meet her gaze.

“Sans hates his job,” she states simply, decisively.

“Which one?” you inquire a little flippantly, but Alphys’s face is more serious than you expected yet again.

“He really only has one,” she says, surprising you. “And that’s to keep the timeline from being destroyed.”

Oh. Um...what? Uh oh.

“I’m not sure I understand,” you gesture hesitantly.

“I’m not saying it’s possible to make him actually _do_ his job,” she adds, only deepening your confusion. “but it might help you understand why he refuses to be responsible for anything else. He won’t even be responsible what you do or don’t know, most of the time. Even if he’s trying, it’s like he can’t explain it. He’ll be cryptic about himself, or what monsters are trying to do in general.”

“Can I ask what that is?”

“Sure,” she replies easily, then darts her eyes at the water as it comes to a simmer. She opens a small packet and adds it to the water; the windows steam a bit as the smell of savory seaweed fills the interior of the car. She drops the empty bit of foil absently on the floor and raises her claws to continue.

“The answer I have for you is that we’re trying to create a sustainable balance of power between humans and monsters, and keep another war from happening. Saving the world is a side effect of that,” she grins, and you return it. “Sans is helping as a favor to me, because we’re friends. Family, even, and not just me. You know? He takes that sort of thing very seriously.”

“I think I’ve noticed that,” you reply thoughtfully. “You guys do science together?”

“I make what humans call monster phones,” Alphys informs you with a small smile. “Sans makes the part inside that makes them able to store objects, and a… few other things like that. Things that exist in more than once place at once. He’s the only one who can.”

You feel very aware of a hidden key.

“That makes sense,” you gesture slowly. “I didn’t realize, but I probably should have.”

“Not necessarily,” Alphys replies. “It’s not the kind of thing we would _want_ people to know.” She sighs, looks away for a moment. “Besides my own personal feelings, there’s the fact that Sans is...vulnerable. Not that he can’t defend himself if he needs to, but the brothers’ abilities aren’t replaceable,” she finishes a little darkly. Huh. You hadn’t considered that Papyrus might have a similar role to Sans in regard to monsters’ sociopolitical situation, but he’s a pretty mysterious dude so you’re not as surprised as you might be.

“Y-you can p-put your seat back too, if you want,” she says aloud as she finally starts to unwrap the vacuum-sealed packages of noodles. You do, and your feet crunch against the empty wrappers and papers littering the floor of her car as you turn to face her, pulling your knee across and leaning your hands against your ankle. Alphys drops the noodles in carefully, and pulls out a long pair of wooden chopsticks to poke them down into the water. She lays them over the top of the pot and raises her claws again.

“Sans and I have a lot in common,” she says fondly. “I’m complete garbage and he’s a total mess; we’re the same height, we’re scientists, and have speech impediments. We’re both pretty gross,” she grins, then falters a little as she sees your expression. “Not in a _bad_ way,” she ameliorates, blushing. “Just...well.” She glances pointedly around at her cluttered car, grabs the chopsticks to poke at the noodles some more and cover her discomfiture, then sighs as she replaces them. “Those still n-n-need a second m-more,” she says aloud.

“What I’m getting at is, we’re both really good at sabotaging ourselves,” she signs sadly, then meets your eyes. “I’m just more likely to interfere when I see him doing it.” She exhales thoughtfully.

“Everyone underground feels something, some kind of effect from what happened down there. In a lot of ways, I got lucky when it comes to that. I know what I did wrong because I did it… myself. And because I can tell people about it.” She looks solemn, but not broken. “I was Royal Scientist before the barrier fell, and I am now again. I got fired between then and now, and I deserved it. I’m going to tell you why,” she signs, then continues aloud, “b-but the noodles are r-ready. Let’s eat first.”

She’s full of surprises, isn’t she. Another way she and Sans are like, then.

“Are they monster food?” you ask. “They smell good.”

“Yes,” she grins, pulling wads of noodles out and into two paper bowls that seem to have appeared out of thin air. “Not the best, but not the worst, either. They’re just m-my favorite. Seaweed f-flavor,” she elaborates unnecessarily.

She sprinkles something on each bowl, then holds the short-handled pan in her claws to add a dollop of broth to each. She sets the bowls down on the panel to either side of the hotplate, then rolls down a window to toss the remainder of the broth out the window without looking. It rolls back up as the pot clacks back down and she hands you a bowl. You both tuck in.

She was right, they’re not great or terrible; they just really hit the spot.

“I see why you like these,” you mumble.

She swallows a mouthful of noodles. “I see why Sans likes _you_ ,” she says, giving you a bit of a flirtatious look. Then a measuring glance, a blush, and another grin. “You’re a t-total hottie, and easy to talk to... it’s like n-nothing bothers you. My c-car doesn’t bother you, and you don’t make m-me f-f-feel like I’m weird. And you’re good in bed,” she adds, then shoves another wad of noodles into her charming overbite.

You give her a considering look of your own.

“Does Sans talk about our, um. Us?”

She tilts her head a little and gives you a sly look. “He doesn’t have to, honestly. I can just tell.” She grins, blushing. “Whatever you did to him when your sister was in town had him mumbling to himself for _days_. And he dropped something. Sans doesn’t _drop_ things. Ever. Ehehehehe,” she snickers, and cuts her eyes at you speculatively.

Good lord.

She smiles at your expression, but suddenly her grin’s much less lewd and more… kindly? Huh.

“Not all m-monsters have genitalia, but I d-d-do,” she says unexpectedly. “Sans doesn’t tease me about it as much as he used to. Actually, he stopped years ago. I’m not s-sure why, but with h-h-him there’s always a reason and it’s usually p-personal. I’m telling you this because it’s a c-cultural thing; monsters with genitalia get t-t-teased about it, or people assume we’re-” she grins, “-how I actually _am_ , but that’s not why I’m l-like this.”

She slurps up some more noodles, spattering the white lab coat she wears over an anime t-shirt and cuffed jeans. “You’re not the kind of p-person to go around asking p-p-people about their genitals, but I thought y-you should know that about us.”

She takes another bite before continuing.

“Since he teased me, I p-p-played it up a lot of the time. The more I did, the more he laughed. I even s-showed him a bunch of h-hentai with all the human sex in it, just to s-see his face. It was the s-same as always, he just l-laughed, but I wonder s-sometimes if I m-made him more curious than h-h-he would have been o-otherwise,” she adds a little sadly.

She’s no Sans, but you’re not exactly great at hiding your facial expressions, and she looks even sadder.

“None of us really _knows_ what happened... but I c-can guess. He was in a b-bad way after he and his b-b-brother moved out of Toriel’s,” she says, gazing out the window at memories you can only guess at. “We had loneliness in c-common, too. He used to talk about it all the time at f-first, then he s-stopped. Like I s-said, he has r-reasons for everything h-he does, and everything h-h-he _doesn’t_ d-do.”

“Are you surprised he’s with me?” you ask quietly.

Her eyes return from the past, giving you a long, commiserating look. “No,” she answers simply.

“Anyhow, w-what I’ve g-got is like a, um. A cloaca?” You almost do a spit take into your bowl at the unexpected subject change. Or, subject...return?

“Ehehehehe... sorry,” she giggles, not sounding very sorry. “Um, I m-m-mean, that’s why I only eat m-monster food. I _could_ eat human food, b-but...you know. _Cloacas_ ,” she says, winking outrageously. You can’t help it, you join her in laughter. You see why Sans likes her, too.

“Undyne likes it,” she sighs happily enough, “and t-that’s all I care about.” She drains her paper bowl before tossing it to molder with the landfill in the back. She adds yours to it as well when you hand it to her, then raises her claws again without further ado, levity draining out of her scaled features. She’s giving you a bit of emotional whiplash, but you suppose it serves you right to be around someone so much like yourself in that way.

“We’d ascertained that the only way to remove the barrier humans made to keep us and our magic underground was using the power of seven human _souls_ ,” she gestures plainly, and your mouth falls open at her bluntness as much as the revelation. “What I never understood was why humans would have necessitated the death of their own kind in order for us to free ourselves. Why make that a condition? Maybe they were convinced we’d never be able to do it, since humans are so strong. But when Frisk fell, we had six.”

Her face grows hard, almost grim.

“Asgore vowed to kill any human who fell into the underground after the deaths of his children, and he followed through. He and Toriel had a… difference of opinion. She left him and went to live in exile, made it so no one could follow her. She did her best to protect and aid humans who fell. But her hand can be heavy, and even the most timid felt its weight after a time. They all left her eventually, and Asgore took their souls. It’s obvious why this isn’t something humans generally know about.”

You swallow, your mouth bone dry.

“Asgore came to regret his decision. He asked me to find a way to open the barrier without killing any more humans. Even back then Sans worked at the lab when he could be bothered, but he wasn’t involved with the soul experiments. Didn’t know about it, as far as I could tell. He’s not the only one who can keep a secret.”

Alphys sighs, and rummages on the floor for a bottle of water, hands it to you. Takes it back and opens it when she sees your hands shake, and you gulp a bit thirstily.

“Human souls persist after death,” she signs adamantly. “Monster souls turn to dust with the rest of our bodies.”

“W-what?” you croak, then cut off as her claws slice the air in a tiny, silencing motion.

“Monsters affect human souls. Humans affect monsters’ bodies. You understand this?”

You nod slowly.

“I was able to build a machine that could extract something called determination from the souls we’d acquired. I believed, and still do, that this is why human souls are able to persist independently.” She doesn’t look happy to be telling you this, even though it was her idea in the first place.

“I asked people to bring me the bodies of their relatives who had fallen down.” She needs a minute before continuing. “You can’t imagine what it was like. Why so many of us just...don’t have families anymore. All we have is each other.” She steadies herself visibly, gets back on topic. “Even though they were certain to come unraveled soon, they were still intact for all intents and purposes until that happened. I injected them with determination to see if I could cause their souls to persist, and maybe use them to help destroy the barrier. Before we _all_ fell down,” she says, and closes her eyes in grief.

“Nothing happened, and I got frantic. I was desperate to succeed, to free us all,” she signs, eyes still closed. “It _had_ to be worth it, I thought. I... told myself. I didn’t even document...” She breathes heavily for a minute. “They woke up. I couldn’t believe it at first, then I thought I’d brought them back to life somehow. I was overjoyed, and confused.”

Alphys opens her eyes, but glances down and to the side. Her eyes comb the useless litter on the floor next to her seat.

“But then they… melted together. Monster’s bodies don’t have enough physical substance to handle what I injected into them, and they were stuck like that. For good.”

Oh my god. You try and absorb what she’s saying, but she’s already continuing.

“That’s what Endogeny is-an amalgamate of several people, all dogs from Snowdin. That’s why Sans found out about what I did almost as soon as it happened, even though he wasn’t supposed to be in that part of the lab. Those are his people. _His_ people that I...” She takes another deep breath, meets your eyes almost pleadingly.

“I don’t understand why, but he _never_ told another soul what I did. He didn’t scream at me, or call me any of the things I deserved. He just held me while I cried. He helped me take _care_ of them, until...” She covers her face, and you turn your eyes away politely.

You find you can imagine why he helped her instead of condemning her. The people who’d ended up that way had been given up for dead before any of that happened. Even if their lives ended up a lot different, she still saved them, and their families had them back. They’re alive. You drink the rest of the water while Alphys regains her composure. Instead of throwing the bottle into the back, she tucks it into one of her capacious lab pockets absently. Apparently her old habits die hard too.

“Frisk helped me come clean with everyone at last, and Toriel fired me when she found out. She tried to get Sans to take over, but he refused. If she’d known him better at the time, I think she might have found a way. Or maybe not. Who knows what might have happened. Only Frisk, I suppose,” she adds with an ironic look. “Asgore and Toriel finally agreed to reinstate me, especially since it was looking like we’d need a lot more than open arms to keep the peace with humanity. I’m sure Frisk had to work overtime to get _that_ to stick, in more ways than one,” she adds darkly. “But Sans had a lot to do with it, too. Why it worked, I mean. But he won’t take charge or make decisions, now or then. If you leave him alone, he won’t do _anything_. He does what he’s asked to do when he feels like it, or what he’s told to do by Frisk. That’s it. Well, other than his help with the Core. I’m not...I don’t know. He helps when I ask him, though.”

You leave the topic of Frisk alone for now. “Do you think Sans feels indebted to you?”

Alphys presses her stiff, scaled lips together for a moment. “It’s possible. He told you that he doesn’t remember where he comes from. No one does.”

You nod.

“I know he and Papyrus weren’t always there, but I can’t remember anything else about that, either. And there’s stuff around the lab, things that I’m _sure_ … well, that’s not important,” she signs quickly. “I can’t remember exactly when he started working with me, but I know I helped him get ahold of some stuff he wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. I never asked him any questions about it either. And I...”

She trails off, then her face firms as if she’s made a decision of some kind. She meets your gaze squarely.

“He asked me to scan him, and not to tell anyone. His soul,” she elaborates, and you guessed as much even as you swallow reflexively at having it confirmed.

“He’s a monster,” she gestures reassuringly. “His soul is a _monster’s_ soul… but I’m guessing you already knew that. He told me you figured out he has human traits. More than one.” You nod again.

“He knows he’s something that shouldn’t be possible, he knows Papyrus is his brother, and he knows what his job is. Those are the facts of his life. That’s what _you_ should know, so you can understand why he acts the way he does.”

“Why are you telling me everything now?” you ask, unable to help yourself.

Alphys laughs. It’s a sincere chuckle, not a snicker or a giggle. It’s low and feminine, like her speaking voice when she’s caught up in one of her interests. When she’s not stuttering.

“This isn’t even _close_ to everything,” she signs with a pained expression. “It’s the bare minimum you need to know if Frisk asks for your advice again, and _I’m_ telling you so that you and Sans will have a chance to be happy instead of letting this situation tear you both apart,” she gestures sadly.

“Can Frisk really annihilate us all?” you ask, horrified.

“Our reports haven’t shown anything like that yet,” she answers cryptically, and your mouth feels dry again. She smiles sadly, hands you another bottle of water. At least you can open it yourself this time. “And the...” she looks hesitant. “The situation is changing,” she adds evasively, and you wonder just how much more there is that she’s not telling you.

“It’s not fair, but nothing that’s ever happened to us has been fair. In the end, Sans is the only one who can do anything about it, and that’s why he’s more helpless than any of us. Do you understand?”

You don’t, but you nod anyways.

“The fact that he’s still alive shows that he’s better at his job than he has any reason to be. If he can actually be _happy_?” Her eyes soften, almost glowing with hope. “Then this time just might be the charm. This might be it, and maybe we can all finally move forward. But more than anything, I love him, and I’m so glad he found you.”

You can’t help it; you tear up. She reaches out and hugs you, knocking the now-cool pan to the floor of her car along with everything else.

“Thanks, Alphys,” you say hoarsely. “I’m glad we found each other, too.”

She leans back with a sigh.

“Frisk is having me put together an initial panel of human research scientists to work with me on some kind of soul project,” she gestures like an afterthought. “I might ask you to review a few-” She stops when she sees your expression. Because of course she’d spill state secrets like she’s asking you to proofread an essay, because she’s Alphys. At least you didn’t jump this time, but you’re trying not to sweat.

“You don’t need research scientists,” you gesture quickly, wondering why the heck everyone seems to think you’re the person to come to with all this, and desperately trying to think without looking like you are.

Alphys is staring at you speculatively again. “What do I need, then?” she asks.

You blink.

“Medical ethicists, obviously” you reply, “a sociologist, and at least two interdisciplinary specialists from as different backgrounds as you can manage to make everything gel. Too many theorists and researchers never bother with half the checks they should, and you don’t need a bunch of people egging you on, or trying to push you further than you’re willing to go. You need people who can tell you if you should or not, and let you know when things aren’t feasible,” you finish, scratching your eyebrow as you try and figure out how not to give away anything on your face. There’s really only one thing this project could be about, and you’re pretty sure it’s Flowey. And you’re starting to suspect you might have to do something _about_ it.

“I’d get at least two folklorists to mine for old human knowledge since you never know what’ll line up with what you have, and what you can just refute. And a political scientist while you’re at it, otherwise you’re just going to be running up against red tape every time you take a step in any direction,” you blurt, wondering if Flowey is part of the “everything” Alphys knows about, according to Sans.

But when you look over at her to see if she’s knows you’re hiding something, she’s just gaping at you.

“What?” you gesture nervously.

“Frisk was right,” she answers cryptically, and you swallow reflexively.

“About...what?” You ask reluctantly.

“I should have asked you first.” The speculative look is back in her eye. She speaks aloud, and this time you do jump. “D-do you check your, um. Viewer? I-is that what it’s c-called?” You nod, flabbergasted. “Do you c-check it every d-day?”

“Yeah,” you croak.

“You might get something from me at some point,” she signs, lower lip clenched under her protruding upper teeth. “Look at it carefully, because it won’t exist before you open it or after you close it.”

You feel your breathing go a little funny.

“Why?” you ask.

“Because you’ll know what to do about it,” she replies grimly.


	28. BLUE MEANS JUMP

Papyrus’s bones are a warmer white than Sans’s. You’re remembering that from the previous portrait as you squeeze out your lightest premixed yellow acrylic onto the palette balanced on your knee. Not that you’ve ever gotten around to painting Sans, although you’ve done a sketch or two at times when he’s fallen asleep in your studio room at home.

Being commissioned to do a second portrait of Papyrus (by Papyrus) was pretty far down on the list of things you expected, but unexpected requests in general are _very_ Papyrus. You’re having a lot of fun, although his insistence on live modeling only is making it take a lot longer than it usually would...but he is very good at keeping still.

“Are you sure you’re not tired yet?” you can’t help but ask, even though you know what the answer’s going to be.

The half-reclined and half-nude skeleton posing in front of the gauzy backdrop arches his sockets at you.

“THE GREAT PAPYRUS DOESN’T GET TIRED, DEAR HUMAN. NOT THAT MODELING ISN’T HARD WORK; I JUST HAPPEN TO BE VERY SKILLED AT IT.”

Rather than wearing clothing, Papyrus has draped swaths of fabric over his body that strategically leave his legs, arms and chest bare. The gauzy lengths cover his pelvis and oddly enough, his neck. The sketching had taken quite a lot of time considering how many individual bones needed to be drawn. This is a lot more involved of a portrait than drawing him clothed and from the back as you’d done before. His features are difficult to render as expressively as you’d like, but in the end you’d decided that until you add the color and shadows, his face going to look a little flat no matter what. Because it’s a skull.

“Those are all real flowers, right?” you muse absently as you add pale blue blobs of paint under each rib you’d carefully inked on the canvas in front of you last session. You squint your eyes, then relax them out of focus as you dart your eyes back and forth from the canvas to Papyrus. This is a lot harder to do when the model won’t allow photographs, but he’d been very insistent about not wanting that kind of ‘evidence’ around. How a photo counts as evidence (of what? who knows) while a painting doesn’t, you have no clue. Regardless, this is your fourth session, and the lack of photos makes you wonder how he manages to set this up exactly the same each time without fail.

“OF COURSE THEY ARE,” Papyrus mutters, the curled phalanges near his forehead placed dramatically and effectively. “I COULD HARDLY EXPECT YOU TO RENDER MY EXQUISITE VULNERABILITY ACCURATELY IN THE PRESENCE OF _ARTIFICIAL_ FLOWERS.”

“How do you get them exactly the same every time? It’s a while between sessions, so they must die, right?”

Papyrus manages to talk just fine while holding position, so a lot of the time you just shoot the shit instead of playing music or anything. It’s always a trip. And a bonding experience, too. The scene you’re painting, shapes draped with more gauzy fabrics, vases of delicate pink, peach, and pale blue flowers...it’s almost overwhelmingly baroque. But once the world’s tallest living skeleton adds his presence to the aesthetic, the starkness of his elongated bones and vivaciously supernatural appearance contrasts well with the lushness of the props and background.

“I JUST DO,” he answers lightly. “I KNOW WHERE THEY GO, SO I… PUT THEM THERE?” He sounds like this is something he doesn’t think about very often.

“IT’S NOT SOMETHING I THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN,” he adds wistfully.

“Are you like Sans?” you wonder aloud, rinsing your brush and trying to pale yellow again. The lampshade you’ve taped to the base to angle the light the direction you want is helping, but “white” is still one of the hardest colors to paint. Because it isn’t ever white, really-it’s your job to convince the eye that it’s seeing white. His bones are like thousands of tiny optical illusions. And this is even before the part where the light and space inside his bones don’t actually make visual sense. It’s a challenge unlike anything you’ve taken on before.

You’re having a blast.

“I mean, do you know where anything is just by thinking about it?” you clarify.

“OF COURSE NOT. KNOWING WHERE SOMETHING IS AND KNOWING WHERE IT GOES COULDN’T BE MORE DIFFERENT. ALSO, NO.”

Before you’d started this work, you’d never seen him without the dark covering he always wears over his bones. Both skeletons seem to have their own unique and individual view of modesty in regard to having bodies made of what appear to be bare human bones. Maybe it has something to do with the unusually strong resonance of their magic, or their vulnerability to human touch. It makes you wonder why this doesn’t seem to apply to other monsters. Maybe it has to do with their human traits, or is a side effect of them.

You open your mouth to ask another question when you hear Papyrus’s phone ringing, and he vaults up with no warning to grab it from on top of the chair that holds his folded clothing. Time for a break, you suppose, and set aside your canvas and cover your palette, planning to go to the kitchen for a snack.

“NNNYES? PAPYRUS SPEAKING,” he barks nasally and immediately starts pacing, his gauzy drapery flowing behind him dramatically. You watch him circle the dining room table idly as you open the fridge, but there really isn’t much in here except three tupperwares you know better than to open and the neverending carton of MTT milk.

“SIGH. I JUST SUPPOSE YOU’LL HAVE TO ORDER A SECOND TRAMPOLINE, THEN. YES.”

Papyrus leans down to start picking at something along the baseboards as he continues his conversation.

“I HAVEN’T IN A WHILE.”

The draped fabric around his neck comes unpinned in the back, starts to slide. He doesn’t notice, but there’s something about it that makes you frown. It shouldn’t come off, and the idea that it might disturbs you. You find yourself walking up quietly behind him, thinking vaguely that you should let him know his scarf’s about to fall, or maybe you can just…

The last bit slides down his front as he continues to talk and scrape with a fingertip, and you can see the back of his neck. It’s bothering you. Why is it bothering you?

You’re right behind him now, and before you realize, you’ve reached out towards him and-

_Would it be better if it hurt more? The twist of the knife, and off goes your head again. It’s okay, you’re sure they’ll do better next time. The glue that holds you together is slipping, the tiny bits that aren’t magic drying out, desiccating and flying into the air as the freezing wind takes you…_

You gasp and yank your hand back, clutching your fingers like they’re burned.

Papyrus flinches, then his shoulders heave slowly.

“I’LL HAVE TO CALL YOU BACK. YES, TOMORROW. NO, DON’T BOTHER. GOODBYE.”

_...WE HAVEN’T EVEN BEEN INTRODUCED, SO YOU’LL HAVE TO FORGIVE ME FOR BEING SO FAMILIAR. IT CAN’T BE HELPED FOR NOW. IT’S NOT LIKE YOU CAN EXPLAIN IT TO ME OTHERWISE. NOT WHEN YOU’RE... OH, YES! THE GOOD NEWS! YES! YOU ABSOLUTELY WON’T REMEMBER_ __ANY_ _ _OF THIS PART AT ALL. THAT MAKES ALL OF THIS SO MUCH EASIER, DOESN’T IT? YOU MUST BE RELIEVED._

And of course, _now_ you remember it. You rub your fingers as Papyrus stands up and turns around, sets his phone on the table. He sees your face and turns pink, avoids your eyes and looks like he’s psyching himself up for some serious blustering.

“NOW?” Papyrus blurts, throwing his impossibly long arms out in frustration. “YOU’RE DOING THIS TO ME _NOW_? I’M NOT EVEN DRESSED.”

He seems vaguely humiliated, and you feel terrible. You manage to shut your mouth, glance to the side.

“BUT I...I SUPPOSE NOTHING’S STOPPING ME FROM PUTTING SOME CLOTHES ON. OTHER THAN THE DIRECTION YOU’RE FACING.”

He exhales slowly, and you turn around in a hurry.

“It wasn’t intentional, and I...” you tell the kitchen in a small voice. “I’m so sorry! _Really_ sorry...I don’t know why I did that.”

“SIGH,” he sighs. “I SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED THIS, BUT… NEVER MIND. YOUR APOLOGY FOR TOUCHING ME WITHOUT PERMISSION IS ACCEPTED.”

You rub your lips with trembling fingers. Why on earth had you not remembered this part? Even Sans had told you, ‘ _paps held you together somehow…_ ’ Oh. You knew, but you also… didn’t know. Didn’t remember.

Papyrus had had to _touch your soul_ in order to help you until Vulkin arrived, before you’d ever even met him.

Oh. Oh, dear. You feel your own face heat as you glance around the kitchen without actually seeing it. Now that you’ve got context for that little tidbit, you can see why Papyrus had suggested not remembering anything about that part. Or about any of the things you’d felt and...seen? While he’d done so.

You cover your eyes, rub them absently. Sans already knows since he was there, of course. Or at least nearby; you remember a low rumble through a door. What you remember of the physical sensations and what exactly got said and done remain dim and distant. But the fact remains that Papyrus is really upset, and you...he clears his throat behind you pointedly, and you turn around.

Yeah, he’s still extremely pink, and not in a pleased way. Kind of a salmon pink, but still. He’s pulled on the shirt and shorts he’d been wearing before the session, and he’s replaced the dark covering, boots and gloves you (otherwise) never see him without. He glances up at the ceiling then gestures you toward the stairs. Oh. Apparently he wants to _talk_ to you about this. You step forward, glance for confirmation (he quirks a socket-brow and nods impatiently), and head on up.

For a second you’re not sure why he doesn’t just talk to you downstairs since no one else is home, then it occurs to you Sans might pop in at any moment. But he wouldn’t just pop in to _Papyrus’s_ room, especially if his brother was already in there.

Papyrus follows you in and shuts the door behind him. He crosses his arms peevishly as he goes to his racecar bed, then thumps back against the wall as he sits hard enough to make you jump. He scowls wordlessly into the painting across from him until he notices you wobbling and wincing as you try to sit down on the floor. You just don’t want to crowd him or anything right now. You’ve already gotten handsy with him, and right now proximity seems unusually fraught.

“OH, FOR-” he cuts off and just thuds his massive gloved palm on the bed beside him pointedly, although still a few feet away.

You come over to the indicated spot, scootch your ass back bit by bit until you’re both against the wall, legs outstretched and staring into the oddly soothing painting. It’s like every time you look at it, you notice something different about it. The way the white edge of a wave-that-isn’t also looks like a ragged moth’s wing. The delicate cyan of the sky-that-isn’t.

“Why does Sans hate his portrait?” you ask as the awkward silence grows extended.

Papyrus rubs a gloved phalanx on his chin in your peripheral vision.

“HE THINKS THE FACT THAT HE FELT AFRAID MEANS HE DIDN’T TRUST ME,” he replies sadly. “HE SHOULD KNOW BY NOW THAT BRAVERY CAN’T EXIST WITHOUT FEAR, AND THAT BRAVERY IS REQUIRED FOR TRUST.”

Yeah. That sounds like him, unfortunately.

“You’re an amazing artist, Papyrus.”

“I KNOW,” he intones, then after a minute: “YOU, ALSO. ARE...GOOD.”

He sighs, shuts his sockets. Opens them, stares into the painting.

“THIS WAS EASIER WHEN YOU CHOSE NOT TO REMEMBER. I DON’T LIKE SECRETS, AND ASKING YOU TO KEEP ONE IS...NOT GOOD. I WON’T DO THAT.”

“I _tried_ not to remember,” you hear yourself say wonderingly. “I almost did a few times, but I just...put it away?” You think about other things you don’t remember, and don’t want to. There’s a good reason for all of them.

“What did I actually _do_ to myself that day? Do you know?”

“NO. BUT...” you see his sockets quirk a little. “I BELIEVE YOU MAY HAVE PULLED... A SELF THAT NEVER HAPPENED TO YOU. HERE. PHYSICALLY. IN RESPONSE, YOUR SOUL...FRACTURED? LIKE A BONE? ALSO, YOUR BONES WERE...WELL, YOU DON’T NEED TO HEAR THAT,” he mutters hurriedly, then continues reluctantly. “THE SAME SOUL IS THE SAME… SELF. YOU’RE LIKE ME. BLUE.”

“Well, I feel nauseous, so you might be on to something there.”

“INTEGRITY MEANS TO HAVE...HIGH STANDARDS,” he begins, tightening his crossed arms. “BUT THAT IS NOT _ALL_ IT MEANS. IT’S EASY TO FORGET THE OTHER MEANING.”

You wait quietly as he fidgets.

“IT ALSO MEANS TO BE WHOLE AND UNDIVIDED.”

He looks at his hands, but you look at the painting.

“I WAS ABLE TO HOLD IT TOGETHER UNTIL VULKIN ARRIVED TO FUSE IT, AND THE... REST OF IT. IT WASN’T IN VERY GOOD SHAPE.”

You shudder.

“BUT IN ORDER TO DO THAT, I HAD TO...TOUCH YOU. THAT IS _NOT_ SOMETHING I-” his teeth remain parted, but more words are not forthcoming.

“I kinda picked up on that, yeah,” you say sympathetically. “sorry.”

“NO, NO, I….IT’S NOT _THAT_. I….THAT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO. I KNOW IT. I AM NOT SORRY, AND YOU SHOULDN’T BE EITHER.”

“Papyrus, if you don’t want me to tell anyone you had to get familiar with me to save my...life or whatever, I-”

“IT’S NOT THAT.”

You glance over surreptitiously but his sockets are drooping, and he still won’t look at you. This really is about more than souls and who may or may not have touched them. You sort idly through what you remember from when you were ill, or...divided that way, and you feel a sudden chill.

Papyrus had died. Even though he’s obviously not dead, he remembers Frisk killing him. You know that, too, and you don’t know how. You also don’t know why Papyrus touching your soul would have made you see that, know these things. As far as you know, that’s not how it even...works. Shouldn’t you have had to touch _him_ to see it that way? To feel him... Wait, is _that_ why he always has his bones covered? You blush again, but the cold feeling drives the blood back out of your face insistently.

You finally turn your head to look at him and he meets your eyes, flinches. You touch your neck hesitantly, and the rest of the air rushes out of him.

He reluctantly pulls off his gloves.

“You don’t have to-” he shakes his head sadly, and you stop.

“My brother does not know that I feel my death,” he begins, and your eyes widen.

“In some ways, he is fragile. He believes he bears many burdens in my stead, and he is not wrong. He is just unaware that I also do so for him. I prefer that this remain the case. I worry that if he were to discover the truth, it would be too much. He would lie down and not rise again. Because of what I did, you know it; you _felt_ it. It was not your fault, but it happened anyway.”

He is still again, until he isn’t.

“We are whole and undivided in ways that others may not be. Because of this, there is almost no separation between our selves. Self-awareness and mindfulness are not optional for us the way it is for others, because without it we would see and remember _all_. It would be too clear, and we are not strong enough to bear it. _No one is._ Therefore, we must create a puzzle of our own minds, and find safe spaces to walk within. The only thing that can save us from our own integrity is complexity. Our souls are not shadowed, but we may _create_ shade there to rest in when we need it.”

That makes a terrifying amount of sense to you.

“It is fine for me to keep this to myself. But because you also know now, even though it is neither fault of ours, it creates conflict. I know too well how secrets can bring distance into even the closest relationships. How can I do that to you? I cannot ask you to keep my secret, even though I did not give it to you willingly, nor did you accept it willingly. The exchange of information was ultimately faultless and therefore does not obligate you. But I also cannot allow harm to come to my brother. I do not know how to resolve this.”

You stare into a roiling, soothing ocean of trust while you think about that.

“I don’t think it needs to be resolved,” you reply aloud.

He looks at you, waits.

“I haven’t told Sans all the details of every bad thing that happened to _me_ , either. And I’m sure I don’t know most of the bad things that’ve happened to him. It’s not that I don’t care, and it’s not that they’re secrets.” You think a little more.

“Sharing too much pain can create more pain, rather than healing it. It’s like...I don’t tell him every time I go to the toilet and what it was like, either. He doesn’t need to know that. And he doesn’t need to know that about _you_ , either.” You sigh. “It’s not a secret, it’s just...private. Does that make any sense? At all?

Rather than replying, Papyrus eyes you softly and slowly extends one of his bare, bony hands to you. After a minute, you take it. Both of you stare at the painting for a little while.

That’s the thing about trust, isn’t it? If there was no chance of harm, the trust wouldn’t be necessary. You don’t _have_ to trust something that isn’t capable of harm. And while intent matters, chance is infinite. There’s always the chance in any dimension of existence that someone _could_ cause harm, purposely or by accident, no matter how much they try not to. No matter how much they love someone. Mistakes happen.

Tears roll down your face.

But isn’t it worth it? Not for anything you get in return, but for the sheer, simple act of trusting. It’s a beautiful gift to yourself and someone you care about, one of the most precious things someone can do. To trust another person. Is there anything more astounding, more awe-inspiring, than knowing another being trusts you with everything they are? Isn’t the gift of their trust worth celebrating?

“I understand the gloves now,” you whisper softly.

Papyrus smiles gently and takes his hand back, pulls the gloves back on. You wipe your eyes and smile back.

“A NEW PORTRAIT IS IN ORDER,” he says in his usual, slightly harsh speaking voice after your tears finish drying. “IT’S A GOOD TIME OF YEAR FOR IT.”

You nod thoughtfully. “When do you think you’ll be, uh, having him sit for it?”

Papyrus narrows his sockets at you suspiciously. “THE TUESDAY AFTER NEXT. DO YOU WANT TO WATCH?”

You turn your head and meet his gaze squarely. “Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I have something I need to do that exact day. At that exact time.” He hasn’t said what it will be yet. “But I’m sure it’ll be a lot of fun anyways, and Sans will be very preoccupied.”

Papyrus stares back into your eyes for a long moment, then nods once. It’s a little reluctant but very deliberate. You exhale slowly and nod back. Pat his gloved hand reassuringly.

“I’M STILL GOING TO COMPLAIN,” he reassures you in turn. “AND I STILL WANT YOU TO FINISH MY PORTRAIT, OF COURSE, AS LONG AS YOU PROMISE NOT TO TOUCH ANYTHING WITHOUT PERMISSION.”

You nod fervently, feeling relieved.

“BUT I WANT A DISCOUNT.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my characterization of Papyrus is based on the phone calls, the entirety of which can be read here: https://pcy.ulyssis.be/undertale/calls


	29. falling for it

The Tuesday after next finds you struggling slowly up an inclining dirt path, birdsong in your ears and the brisk wind of early spring trying to find its way through the weave of your cardigan. You kind of want it to, because you’re starting to sweat.

The trees are lovely, dappling and swirling the still-thin sunlight as you gauge the remaining distance as best you can. You certainly had the right idea of wearing most of what you’re carrying around your waist instead of your shoulders, to spare your joints as much as you can. Short skeletons aren’t the only ones who have hips built to carry their weight most efficiently, you think to yourself with a fond smile.

You’d asked Diane to drive you as far as she could, and consider yourself lucky that she knows better than to ask too many questions. It’s hard to find someone willing to help you out with tasks you can’t manage on your own (like driving on the few occasions where it ends up being a necessity) without feeling entitled to a tithe of personal questions you’re somehow obligated to answer. _The joys of being disabled_ , you think with a wry twist to your mouth.

You adjust the strap around your waist a little to allow you to step up and over some brush that’s covering the path, and manage just barely not to lose your footing. Diane couldn’t have helped but notice you’re outfitted for some unusual activity-your rugged jeans, multiple packs, and heavy, steel-toed boots give away at least that much. Even the insoles won’t really save you, but after Alphys’s second magically disappearing dossier of information, you can’t put this off any longer.

Monsters can absorb human souls, apparently, and not just in theory. It’s happened at least once, and the effects on monsters and humans had been...unforeseeable. Unfortunate. Lots of “uns”. You wonder if that makes up for monsters’ physical vulnerabilities to human violence and human intent, or if there’s really any sort of balance to be struck in this situation. This situation that had apparently been the way things work ever since the barrier fell, and let out everything that had been stewing in its own magic for millennia; magic and monsters awash in a river of spacetime that had flowed deeper and slower underground than it had above it.

Your first fall isn’t too bad. You only skid a foot or two down the incline to the side, and whatever got pushed up under the hem of your jeans leg also had to bite through your sock before it hit flesh. You sit for a minute breathing heavily, sweating despite the chill in the air. Then you calmly pull up your pant leg to assess the damage; a scrape, nothing more.

You open one of the bags around your waist (your sister still calls them ‘fanny packs’ like somebody’s grandma), and pull out the disinfectant and gauze, cleaning the wound where you fell. No sense in wasting energy clambering back to the path until this is taken care of.

You hope Sans’s second portrait sitting is going better than his first, although you’re certain there won’t be much ‘sitting’ actually involved. You feel sincerely regretful that you’re missing what might be your only chance to see him sparring (not that you’d be able to see too much outside the encounter you assume will be happening right about now), but Papyrus had acknowledged that Sans would in fact be quite distracted. Much too busy to think about where you are and what you might be up to.

Not that you don’t want him to _know_. In fact, if you survive this, you’ll probably let him know how it went as soon as you get yourself cleaned up and put back together. But you have no intention of asking for permission to do what needs to be done, and you want to spare him having to make a decision like that.

You love him, after all.

Having something to fix and the reassurance of bullshitting yourself renews your energy and you rise to your feet again, continue on the path. You’re not here for Sans. You’re here for you, and that’s okay.

The scans of Sans’s soul had given you a little more insight into why Frisk believes someone might have made the skeleton brothers in some kind of lab, although not as much as if you had the kind of expertise the monsters (and possibly Frisk) do at reading them. You didn’t really need the confirmation that Sans’s human traits are patience and justice, although finding out that they can theoretically be analyzed separately from his monster soul the way Alphys and Sans apparently had done was more than a little disturbing.

You struggle admirably over a fallen tree, manage not to fuck up your hands too badly on the rough bark. You really should have thought to buy some climbing gloves or something, or at least bring some winter ones for warmth. What if it had been colder than the forecast had called for? Sure, the magic seeping back into the world had helped a great deal to rebalance the climate issues that had finally begun to level whole cities with flood, frost, and fire when the barrier fell (just in time, really), but cold snaps still happened out of nowhere, especially up here.

Well, you knew all of this before you came. No use worrying about it now; you’re going to be stuck with the consequences of any failures in planning regardless.

You might ask Sans at some point if part of his sexual reticence with other monsters, especially in regard to sharing his magic, had had anything to do with not wanting them to discover his human traits. Although you assume that if he really had wanted to, it probably wouldn’t have stopped him. As for doing that stuff with you, well. You had no way to know any better (or the difference), and it’s not like he could have brought it up without it seeming odd or abrupt. And he technically wasn’t allowed to tell you. Any monsters who’d been with Sans obviously had kept their mouths shut about it, or at least enough that it hadn’t caused any problems for him or anyone else.

Your second fall isn’t as kind, but you don’t think your wrist’s actually broken. Sprained for sure, but you just tape it up and keep going. It was worth it anyways; catching yourself on your hand saved your hip from colliding with a rock that might have ended this little excursion right there. Another notch in the win column as far as you’re concerned.

The second missive from Alphys had been almost as illuminating as the first, which had finally given you the name of Asgore and Toriel’s son. _He really is terrible with names, isn’t he_ , you think to yourself, using your good hand to grab a tree branch and heave the rest of you up an incline you wouldn’t have been able to manage otherwise. You come down hard on your ankle, but manage you tighten your boot enough to keep yourself upright for now. Hopefully it won’t swell too much.

But the real clincher for your conclusions had actually ended up being a fragment of something else almost in passing-the information sent to you in a more usual way. You’d finally remembered to ask about monster funeral customs, which you’d been meaning to do ever since you’d had a game night with your mother’s urn in its own seat, gleaning respectful nods from the monsters and Frisk.

Ashes are like dust to them, and the urn is close enough to a favorite object, you suppose.

You sigh. If you hadn’t had to get so in touch (ha ha, literally) with your own soul in order to fix the injuries caused by Frisk, and if you hadn’t had these wonderful experiences with Sans (even in pain and shaking with exertion, your heart flutters just thinking about them), you still might not have put it together. Feeling your own soul wounded, feeling it heal, feeling so very… determined to get better. Thinking about how many times you’d had to do it all on your own, without the help of magic and monsters to guide you, to make yourself whole again. That’s what made you realize, even more than Alphys’s analyses of determination. She still doesn’t know what causes determination levels to rise, or why some have more than others. Or at least you don’t think she does. You’ve been keeping your conclusions on that matter pretty close to your chest ( _haha,_ _get it_ ), but you don’t know her well enough to make a call on if she’s hiding something like that. And if _Sans_ says she’s good at keeping secrets, you’re pretty sure you’ll never know her well enough for that.

But if you’re going to convince Frisk to work on healing their own wounded soul instead of ceaselessly courting the idea that there’s a more perfect outcome waiting for them in another timeline...what you actually need is more time. Time to help them realize that their obsession’s part of what’s hurting them, and maybe even keeping them from being able to heal themself. Or at least the time to introduce the possibility, for fucks sake. But the little pieces falling into place are making you feel more and more like you might not ever get that chance. Not unless you talk to him first.

There has to be a way to buy you that time. You have to try, at least.

You stagger a little, wipe your forehead. You take a moment to breathe, and rest a little bit although you don’t sit. The last thing you need right now is to stiffen up, and it’s not like there’s any hot water around to make your joints malleable again if you stop for too long.

You lean away from the trunk of the tree, getting ready to-

The golden flower pushes its way through the earth a few feet from you.

“Golly! Coming all this way by your lonesome?” Flowey grins, and there’s something unsettlingly blank about it. “You’re not very _smart_ , are you?”

You give a casual shrug, grinning enigmatically despite the sweat reappearing on your brow.

Flowey grimaces in a dramatic caricature of disdain at your response, tilts his petaled face at you.

“...Is that sexually transmitted or something?”

“You really _don’t_ like Sans, do you?” you muse. His appearance is even more uncanny up close.

Flowey narrows his eyes suspiciously. “Nope.”

You exhale in amusement.

“You _do_ have a soul. Or a piece of one, at least. Chara’s?”

His expression doesn’t change other than a narrowing of his eyes.

“I don’t really like _you_ , either.”

“It’s okay,” you reply. “We don’t even really know each other yet, but I thought I’d take the chance to try and change that.”

Vines rip out of the earth and coil around you, cold and dirty. Bugs and worms rain down as you’re forced to kneel. You shiver, and you can’t really hide the way your face twists in pain as your joints protest this rough treatment, especially after such a dicey and unwise hike, nearly to the peak of Mt. Ebott. Flowey’s face rises above yours as more vines tilt your head back uncomfortably.

“I _don’t_ have a soul, and I think you know it. So why would you take a chance like that?”

Well, you can still talk.

“I think if you really didn’t have a soul, you couldn’t like or dislike people. You wouldn’t care so much about everything, which you obviously do. And you wouldn’t have been able to do _what you did to San_ s without one, either,” you finish, unable to keep the emotion from your voice for that last part.

Flowey’s face gets still for a moment, then the bright expression returns.

“You know I could literally rip your arms and legs off, right?” he asks pleasantly.

You think about that.

“So could a bus, if I crossed the street without looking. I still cross the street, and I’ve still got my limbs so far.”

“Aren’t you afraid of that?” he laughs. “It’s very painful.”

You glance to the side, considering.

You look back, meet his eyes. “Yes?”

The amusement slowly slides out of Flowey’s unnatural features the same way his vines slowly slide away from your limbs.

“What do you _want_?” he frowns at you.

“Frisk is all messed up,” you say after a minute. “I wanted to maybe get to know you, see if you’ll tell me who you are. Maybe figure out why they want to...do whatever they’re trying to do to you. Create a soul, or...use one somehow…? which doesn’t actually make any sense to me at all. ‘Soul power can only be derived from that which was once living’, right? What are souls even- well, never mind,” you sigh. “That’s not the most important thing right now.”

Flowey raises the equivalent of an eyebrow.

“And what is?”

“Do you think Frisk is right, and someone in the underground made Sans and Papyrus out of monster juice and human soul extract?”

Flowey throws back his head and laughs uproariously before managing a reply to that. A leaf comes up to make a wiping motion at a tear that doesn’t exist.

“You make them sound like one of Toriel’s _pies_ ,” he guffaws. “Boy _howdy_. You’re funnier than the trashbag, I’ll give you that,” he adds, tilting his face away to cut his eyes at you coyly. “You managed to surprise me, so I’ll answer you.

He grins.

“No.”

You wait, but there’s no more so you just nod.

“Now I get to ask _you_ a question,” Flowey drawls, leaning forward. “What does a dickless skeleton’s jizz taste like?”

You smile patiently.

“Spicy, but not in the usual sort of way,” you reply evenly. “Sort of like sichuan peppercorns.”

The flower’s features drift extremely out of tune.

“Since you’re in the habit of asking questions you don’t actually want the answers to,” you continue, “why don’t we try something else. I’ll tell you what _I_ think, and then you can decide whether or not to tell me if I’m right. What do you say?”

Silence. A warning glare followed by a hesitant nod.

“Okay,” you take a deep breath, and laboriously shift to sit cross legged on the hard ground. You land awkwardly and wince as your hip hits a rock, but that’s not about to stop you from saying your piece.

“Monster’s bodies are...continuous with their souls in a way that humans’ aren’t. Because of this, when the Dreamurrs’ son absorbed Chara’s soul and then subsequently turned to dust when he died, Chara’s soul was also somehow still _continuous_ with that dust. After all, what does ‘absorbed’ mean? Chara’s soul had been harmed enough by humanity that it was both volatile and incredibly determined, and then they ended up somewhere that those properties were unexpectedly and incredibly relevant. Unexpectedly _powerful_.”

You chew your lip a moment.

“A closed system where magic had been pooling into absolutely everything for millennia or longer. Because of Chara’s unusual soul properties, Asriel’s dust was active on objects in a way it shouldn’t have been even after _both_ were gone. Including Chara’s body, buried at the site where Frisk fell. Where Frisk _died_ , at least to start with. You were reanimated by Alphys’s determination injections, but Frisk’s innate determination was much higher and they were reanimated by both that, and exposure to the remains. Dust containing the determination of the human soul Asriel had absorbed, inhaled with a dying breath? Who knows. But that’s where the ability to manipulate time comes from, and Chara and Frisk’s combined souls and determination overrode… yours.”

Flowey’s mouth is open a little.

“That’s _you_ , I think. Um, the son? Asriel. And Chara, too, I guess.” You sigh. “I wonder how long you spent playing with them, trying to figure out what had happened. Then maybe just...playing. But that’s still not the most important thing.”

Flowey closes his mouth with a snap, then opens it again to reply. “You have very unusual priorities.”

You smile sympathetically. “I think you very much want to die, and I’m here to ask you not to. Because I believe that if you do, Frisk will annihilate this timeline. And I promised myself I would live my life after spending so long fighting for the right to do so. I deserve...” you trail off, because you hadn’t planned to say that. You hadn’t even known you thought that, but after another hesitation you decide you might as well tell the truth.

“Despite everything, I deserve the chance to be happy.”

Flowey’s face is blank, but not indifferent.

“Maybe I was wrong,” he says after several long, silent minutes, and then disappears back into the dirt. After a while, you accept that he’s not coming back anytime soon and manage to stagger to your feet. You fish the pills out of your pocket and swallow them, girding your proverbial loins for the trek back. The pills should kick in right as the pain becomes crippling, you suppose. You hope.

Well, at least you know a shithead flower somewhere underground is revising his opinion of your intelligence. Fat lot of good that does you, although you suppose it doesn’t surprise you.

The most surprising part is that you _almost_ make it back off the mountain.

***

Sans finds you near sunset at the bottom of a scree slope close to the base of Mt. Ebott, and he even manages to find a tree to step out from behind rather than subjecting you to having to see him materialize out of complete nothingness. Or whatever it looks like from the other side of the shortcut. Probably scary, you suppose.

“I understand if you’re pissed at me,” you rasp as he approaches, clear your throat and try to project a little. You know better than to try and move by now. “Or upset, or whatever you are.”

His expression’s unreadably flat as he squats down near you, reaches out with shaking hands.

“ _ **Stop,**_ ” you say in a tone that brooks no argument. Or at least you hope it doesn’t.

You sigh in relief as he draws his hands back, disbelief saturating his features. The tips of his phalanges click rapidly across his teeth before he speaks, then he shoves his hands carefully back in his pockets, hiding their stricken mumbling as he tries to assess the situation.

“i gotta take you to tori,” he says in a shaky voice. “paps can’t handle this. might not know everything bout humans but i know feet aren’t supposed face that way.”

You sigh regretfully. It sure hurts a lot, even with the double dose.

“I want to talk to you first,” you continue. He still hasn’t touched you; another good sign.

“m’not gonna sit here and watch you die,” he whispers hoarsely, averting his gaze.

“I’ll pass out _way_ before I die,” you reply reassuringly, “and if that happens, you can do whatever you need to.”

You smile gently as he tries not to look relieved by that and fails.

“m’not angry,” he says, still not looking at you. Well, you looked down at yourself earlier and you can’t say that you blame him. “jus’ upset. scared. you went to see that fuckin flower, huh? i’d ask if he did this but i can see where you fell. why...”

His voice disappears, and he takes a slow breath. “i don’t know why we can’t have this conversation at tori’s.”

The pain and confusion in his voice sends a shard of ice into your soul and eases you at the same time.

“I’m sorry, but I just need to know you won’t just… _do_ things. Without me saying it’s okay. It’s the only way I can deal with any of this,” you admit quietly. “You being how you are, me being the way I am. Changing. And I want you to know that this isn’t some kind of fucked up test for you. I _know_ you.” His hand comes out shaking, covers his face. It hurts, but you can’t make yourself regret it. “It’s for me,” you continue. “I’m the one who needs to know. There’s a lot at stake, and a lot going on. I can’t really afford to have these kinds of doubts, and we don’t….”

You’ve been calm til now, but your breath hitches.

“We don’t have _time_ for me to figure this out the easy way,” you sigh shakily. “I know I’m fucked up pretty bad right now, but I need to know that no matter what, you won’t just do things to me without permission. Otherwise none of this is going to work, and I won’t be able to do what I need to do. I have to be able to trust you, and I don’t have time to teach myself how. I know it’s fucked up, and I’m sorry. We both have a lot...”

His fingers rasp rapidly across his sockets, clicking as he shakes.

“We both have a lot of fucked up shit going on upstairs, and I know sometimes I let you think you’re the only one. Or I pretend you are. I don’t know. But I do know that I needed to prove to myself that if I don’t want you to, _you can’t stop me_ from doing something. That I can hide things from you if I...if I need to. That you’re not some kind of omniscient, omnipotent...god? Thing? Whatever it is that some part of me worries you are. I needed to prove to myself that you won’t interfere with what I’m doing if I tell you not to.”

“w-” his voice disappears again, and he finally pulls his hand away from his eyes. Looks down at you, grin twisted at the edges and sockets tortured. “what else needs to happen before you know that?” he whispers miserably.

“I think I just have to tell you the good news, and I can’t once we get to Toriel’s.” You smile up at him, meet his horrified, loving gaze. Beads of magic tremble at the corners of his sockets.

“I’m pretty sure I just bought us at least another year,” you whisper triumphantly.

 

 


	30. if the shoe fits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit chapter 30 you guys <3 please enjoy this fine handcrafted slab of steaming verbiage. I love you.

You must have passed out after all, because the next thing you remember is Toriel’s soothing voice telling you not to move, and a burst of pain in your left leg that quickly turns to a much more neutral sensation of warmth. That same warmth seems to creep through the rest of you as you lie prone on something agreeably soft; moving, speaking, and opening your eyes don’t seem like very urgent priorities to you whatsoever. After some unknown amount of time spent in relative comfort facilitated by the unfamiliar but welcome lassitude saturating you, you hear her voice continue absently, almost as if she’s talking to herself. You know she isn’t, though, because you understand her perfectly.

“I know better by now than to ask what you were doing when you fell down a mountain, or why he brought you to me in such a state before immediately departing.” Her musically maternal voice penetrates your ears and more importantly, your understanding without a hitch. “The state you are in being extremely injured, of course,” she adds unnecessarily. You’re neither asleep nor awake, and you’re just as happy to stay like this for the time being since what she’s saying is true.

“I am not stupid. I am aware that my own child has wounds they choose not to seek my help in healing. I know they hide many things, and that those things have something to do with the brothers. Something to do with you now as well, I suppose.” She sighs, sounding very tired. Almost as tired as you feel.

“Those who have lost too much can hold on too tightly, sometimes. I am not unaware. My fears are not unimportant, but they are...not a burden that Frisk must needlessly bear for the rest of their life. They are an adult now, and...I am...”

Something like flames lick at you, if flames were warm instead of burning.

“I know that the times of difficult choices, perhaps even terrible ones...impossible ones, I fear... are not yet behind us. I still hold out hope that someday they will be, but….No. No, it is not important.”

She sighs, and the warmth seeps into your bones, deepening your relaxation and pushing away consciousness.

“It is not as important as the fact that I finally got to see one of them grow up.”

***

The next time you open your eyes, you recognize the dark covering on Papyrus’s bones right away. You also notice the gold trim on the glove that holds a screen perched on his femur, since it’s also in your view. You blink and suck in a waking breath, realizing you’re in a massive four-poster bed in a room you don’t recognize. Oh, it must be...Toriel’s. That’s right. You remember now, and you also remember waking up to be fed at least twice, taken to the bathroom once, and being informed that your sister and your work have been told that you had some kind of accident and are recovering nicely. Actually, wait. No, you think you spoke to your sister yourself at least once, but you only remember it vaguely.

You still hurt all over, and if your work knows what’s going on, then you’re good to just rest and recover for now. You assume that Papyrus is helping out with the healing, since as far as you know Vulkin only really specializes in chronic conditions, not emergency medicine or trauma. Sans had said your broken leg(s? you’re not sure) was more than Papyrus could handle with his healing alone, but you suppose the fact that you’re not screaming right now means the worst is hopefully over. Papyrus is holding you casually against his chest, leaned up against the headboard as he watches yet another Mettaton spinoff. You stir, and his sockets snap toward you suddenly enough that you jump, which makes you wince. Before you have a chance to formulate anything coherent, he sucks a breath in between his teeth like a bit, and he’s already off to the races.

“I HAD _NO IDEA_ YOU WERE SO _PASSIONATE_ ABOUT CAMPING!” he bellows, as if in response to something you’d already said. “I’M SURE YOU’RE ABSOLUTELY AWASH WITH DISAPPOINTMENT THAT THE GREAT PAPYRUS WASN’T PRESENT TO ACCURATELY REVIEW YOUR PERFORMANCE AND PROVIDE HELPFUL CRITIQUE,” he gushes conversationally, removing a small speaker from his auditory meatus.

“FRISK HAS ONLY BOTHERED TO EARN FIFTEEN OF THE FORTY-SEVEN MERIT BADGES I INVENTED. I THINK THEY COULD USE SOME FRESH COMPETITION TO SPARK THEIR OUTDOORSPERSONSHIP TO NEW HEIGHTS, AND YOU’RE SURE TO PROVIDE JUST THE IMPETUS THEY NEED!”

His sockets and broad grin seethe with encouragement and enthusiasm.

“AFTER ALL, YOU’RE ALREADY A SHOO-IN FOR ‘MULTIPLE BONES BROKEN IN ONE DAY’!”

Papyrus,” you croak unevenly. “I’m-”

“FRISK COULD ONLY DREAM OF SUCH COMMITMENT TO COMPLETION! AND HERE I THOUGHT MY PERFECTLY EXECUTED FORWARD ROLL INTO A SHALLOW POND THAT INCIDENTALLY MAY HAVE ALSO BROKEN MOST MAJOR COMPONENTS OF MY RIGHT WRIST WOULD MAKE ME THE _ONLY_ HOLDER OF THAT PARTICULAR HONOR!”  
“I’m-”

“OH-HO!! NO NEED TO BE MODEST. UNLESS OF COURSE YOU’RE LOOKING TO EARN THE MODESTY BADGE? YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHERE IT GOES!! THAT’S NOT A CODPIECE, IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING.”

“Hey, I’m s-”

“THAT’S RIGHT-I AM _ALSO_ HOLDER OF THE MODESTY BADGE, BUT RATHER THAN TITILLATING YOU IN YOUR DEPLETED STATE BY REVEALING IT!! I…! WILL…! MERELY PROVE IT TO YOU!!! WITH MY OVERWHELMING HUMILITY!! HERE IS AN ADMISSION. EVEN THE GREAT PAPYRUS CAN FALL VICTIM TO, DARE I SAY, HUBRIS! IN THIS REGARD!!”

His sockets vibrate with the overwhelming intensity of his sincerity.

“I just-”

“BUT I’M SURE MY COOL FRIEND WILL INVITE ME NEXT TIME THEY DECIDE TO GO CAMPING ON MOUNTAINS WITH UNSTABLE GEOLOGICAL FEATURES THAT PRESENT UNPARALLELED OPPORTUNITIES!! TO EARN OBSCURE AND EVEN UNPRECEDENTED MERIT BADGES!!” he practically screams. “DON’T WORRY ABOUT PACKING A TOOTHBRUSH, I HAVE EXTRA!”

The door to the room cracks open behind you, and you only hear it because Papyrus finally seems to need to take a breath.

“The oatmeal is almost done, child,” Toriel intones musically. You narrow your eyes in confusion, but it turns out she was talking to Papyrus since he nods, seeming placated. Not that he’d seemed _un-_ placated before. Just extraordinarily… and loudly... enthusiastic. About camping opportunities.

“Perhaps you could visit your brother later?” she suggests after another beat of silence. “I’m sure he’d love it if you came to see him tonight.”

“I...SUPPOSE I COULD MAKE AN EXCEPTION,” he replies, sounding almost chastened. He looks down at you, blinks his sockets a moment. “YOU MUST BE VERY TIRED,” he adds, and glances back up at Toriel. “WOULD YOU LIKE TO WATCH METTATON WITH ME UNTIL YOU GO BACK TO SLEEP? OR DO YOU WANT TO HAVE OATMEAL AS WELL?”

He offers you the speaker in his gloved fingers, but you just shake your head with a smile.

“Thanks, Papyrus. I’m okay, though. Thank...thank you,” you say again lamely.

“YOU’RE WELCOME,” he replies without looking at you, and replaces the earbud. You hear the door click behind you again as you drift off.

***

The next time you open your eyes with actual thoughts forming in your head, it’s Frisk’s bulk sharing the bed with you. You might not have been able to tell if they were awake or not if it wasn’t for their sigh.

“The gang’s all here, huh?” you whisper into the silence. There’s just enough light for them to read your lips, you think. Raising your hands to sign might be a little beyond you at the moment. “Except Sans, I guess.”

“He’s at Grillby’s,” they sign shortly.

“How long have I been down for?”

“Four and a half days so far.” Frisk looks expressionless, which is how you know they’re displeased. “We haven’t seen him since he brought you here, though.”

“I thought anything was worth it to save your friend.” You shouldn’t have said that, but it’s too late now. You’re so tough, taking cheap shots at teenagers…no, wait. They’re 20 now, aren’t they. Not a teenager anymore.

God, you’re exhausted.

“That’s not a bad thing,” they explain instead of taking the bait. “We’d be worried if he _wasn’t_ there. They make sure he eats and sleeps, especially if he’s drunk.” Maybe a year makes all the difference; maybe another one will make the rest. Another year of maturity for Frisk, a year you’d bought very dearly. Maybe you could stand to mature a little as well, even though you’re almost twice their age. They sigh again, and you can see their eyes glitter before they soften.

“You don’t have to worry about him forgiving you or anything like that, even if you fought or...whatever happened,” they gesture uncertainly. “You just have to go get him when you’re ready,” they say tactfully, even though they mean “able to.”

They sit up and roll over to lean off the bed, roll back with what you now know is called a “Starfait” retrieved from somewhere on the far side. The same burning-sweet drink for current and future invalids Papyrus had brought you a long time ago. You’re too tired to sit up, but when you roll to your side Frisk sticks the straw between your lips in a depressingly habitual motion. You suck it down obediently, and once it’s gone you manage to lift your arms to sign.

“A-s-r-” Frisk’s fingers still yours gently but insistently.

“You shouldn’t call him that,” they inform you. “Especially not here.”

“Why are you trying to make him a soul when he already has one?” you ask, since you both know who you mean now.

After the fifth consecutive minute of silence you realize they’re not going to talk about it right now, so you just pat their arm weakly in apology.

“Thanks. I mean, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” they gesture sincerely. “It really is. No one’s mad at you, even Papyrus is just irritated because Sans hasn’t been home, so he has to go to Grillby’s and smell the grease. He gets a little weird when they spend too long apart,” they explain, but you’d already suspected as much. He’d told you himself, after all. But Frisk’s still talking, and their face goes unreadable. “I’m not mad at you either. I might even be grateful,” they add obscurely. Reminds you of someone. “Maybe you know why.” They glance away briefly before meeting your eyes again to sigh, pat your arm reassuringly. “You’re almost back to normal. Just try to get better, okay?”

You nod, and you’re asleep again once your head hits the pillow.

When you wake up, the light’s changed and so have Frisk’s clothes, but they’re still there. Or, there again, you’re not sure which. You feel better...a _lot_ better.

Fantastic, actually, so it’s possible Papyrus even came back for another shift. Your stomach twists guiltily when you consider that you don’t think you’ve been left alone once since you got here. And even after everything you’ve accepted from them, you still have to ask for more.

You shake their shoulder gently to ask for a shower, a change of clothes, and a ride downtown.

***

You push open the door to Grillby’s and give yourself a minute for your eyes to adjust to the dimness inside once it shuts behind you. Some kind of antique jangly guitar music in 3/3 time is playing; an accented singing voice lilts and wails over a mercurial bassline. It’s the kind of music Sans likes; you can’t help but imagine him shuffling through an underground garbage dump, looking for...what must they have been? Tapes? CDs? Centuries-old vinyl records? The sort of recording that actually needs their own machine to be played on, something broken by its fall and repaired by tiny, clever-boned fingers.

The eponymous fire elemental himself is behind the bar polishing a glass that doesn’t seem to need it. He returns your nod with a plume of smoke but doesn’t go anywhere; Lola’s in her usual spot and her usual state. Otherwise the place is abandoned at this hour except for table number seven.

You cross the cleared space in the middle of the bar, bending down with a surprising amount of ease to pick up the dirty pink slipper in the center of it. The top of the table and the shocking multitude of empty glasses lined up on it prevent you from seeing his face, but a few inches of tibia and fibula above one bare sock and one slippered one jut out from the booth bench and give him away. You approach at an angle and stoop down before you’re able to see the rest of him, gazing sadly at his sock for a moment before sliding the slipper back on his foot carefully.

“welp. guess it fits. l-looks like you gotta marry me now. ‘s how it works, right? useta...”

His low, thick rumble’s barely audible, but his voice reaches your ears no matter what, doesn't it. He sounds like he’s talking in his sleep, and from the number of glasses lined up on the table he might be. You’re not really sure about his capacity, but that’s got to be over it.

“use ta read that one t’paps back before we...got...got up here,” he grunts, and you stand up and back away a little as you hear him start to rustle and slide, feet kicking to counterbalance his labored rising. Phalanges clack and skitter suddenly against the tabletop, shoving two of the empties back without tipping them. His other hand scrabbles at the seat and now you see his sleepy skull lurch up, come to rest sideways against the red-cushioned back of the booth as he blinks his sockets at you muzzily.

“c’mere,” he slurs as he sits upright, and you close the distance between you finally, coming to stand at the end of the padded bench of the booth he occupies. He wraps his sweater-softened arms around you tightly for a long minute, shoves his skull against your chest. You feel him tense his bones against an odd shudder, and all of a sudden his hands are roaming you boldly enough to heat your face, although you suppose in his own way he’s already home and this counts as ‘privacy’. Still, you jump when his cool, smooth fingers slide into your shirt, and he stops and darts his fuzzy eye lights at you apologetically.

“everything’s back where it’s supposed to be, huh?” he comments. His bare hands glide up and around your shoulders. He just hangs there loosely, skull falling back on his neck to gaze up at you adoringly. His sigh smells like clean grease, tomatoes, and dirty bones. You’re trying not to feel guilty and failing, and his eye lights focus just a little more as you open your mouth. Nothing comes out, though.

“see?” he says, and you feel the tiny, almost-pointed bones of his fingertips touch your face gently as he shifts and sways. “you already know. i don’t-” he makes a swallowing noise, but it doesn’t seem related to what he’s saying. “don’t gotta do anything. ‘s a relief.”

It’s true enough, you suppose. You already know that the most efficient thing to do isn’t always the right thing to do, after all. You’d hurt yourself and him in order to keep what you have, or at least done what you believed you needed to in order for it to be possible. You reach up to touch his hands, take them into yours and squeeze them gently. He makes a tiny noise, and a rolling, sentimental guitar riff begins.

 _Good times for a change..._  
_See the luck I’ve had can make a good man turn bad_

“Can I have this dance?” you ask, stepping back a little without letting go.

“thought you’d never ask,” he mumbles, and you manage to help him out of the booth without him tipping over. You pull him out a few feet to the same spot you’d danced before, and he seems just coordinated enough to hold onto you and step awkwardly around in a circle again.

 _So please, please, please, let me, let me, let me…._  
_Let me get what I want this time_

“I’m sorry,” you try after a minute or so.

“you’re not, though,” he sighs without rancor or resentment. “you’d do it again.”

He’s not wrong.

“I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I can’t just sit there and let it get taken away.

 _Haven't had a dream in a long time_  
_See, the life I've had can make a good man bad_

He grunts. “gets taken away whether you let it or not,” he mumbles uneasily. “can’t...can’t really hold on ta anything.” Despite his words, you can feel his fingers grip your arms reflexively, and he stumbles a little as he shuffles to the side. “frisk...shouldn’t be possible. me neither. but there’s nothin i can do,” he mutters.

 _So, for once in my life let me get what I want_  
_Lord knows it would be the first time…_  
_Lord know it would be the first time._

“I thought that was your job,” you whisper, and he ducks his head, keeps it there. He’s silent for long enough that another song begins, and his hand leaves you to swipe weakly at his downturned face.

“you don’t know what you’re sayin, but it...”

He staggers a moment, then looks up at you blank eyed, the flattened edges making his grin grotesque. Fuck. Apparently you really don’t know what you’re saying.

“I’m-”

“i’m not gonna _kill my ki_ _d_ , okay?” he rasps, devastated. “wouldn’t even _help_ , just make it happen sooner. there’s nothin i can _do_.”

“Sans, I’m _sorry_ ,” you quaver out, appalled. Is that what Alphys had meant? Or is that just what it would take? “I didn’t know, and I’m...I didn’t mean to fuck myself up that bad. I just didn’t know what else to do.”

He shakes his skull with a surprising amount of vigor. Rasps his hand over his face some more, takes a deep breath.

“nah, i...i know why you did what you did. i got scared, did too much freaking out and made you scared. didn’t...explain nothin. said a bunch a shit i shouldn’t have that...that day. when we saw frisk n flowey talkin. an th-that’s why-” he chokes off, and you see him wipe a tear from the corner of his socket again before his fingers come back to fist themselves into your cardigan tightly. You glance over at the bar. Grillby’s there but his back’s to the both of you. Sans is speaking so quietly you’re pretty sure you wouldn’t be able to hear him at all if he wasn’t speaking from his soul.

“i always knew what i did, even if it wasn’t...wasn’t _me_. even before frisk told me. fucked me up inside, that i’m the kinda, kinda person that could jus’...you can _feel_ it. s’why...”

He’s just staring through your chest without seeing, same devastated expression carved into his features. “tori n me couldn’t work out. she always knew i was hiding something… and, and _me_? i couldn’t even _try_. what if she…?” He huffs out a disbelieving breath, stumbles again as he stares determinedly down at his feet. “what if she felt it? i’m just...jus like _him_ ,” he rambles, and now you’re not even sure what he’s talking about anymore.

“she didn’t deserve that,” he whispers, “no one...should have to...” He tilts his head back up. “shit,” he mutters, eye lights small and dim. “i don’t know why i’m telling you that stuff. sorry. i’m... sorry.”

He’s stopped now, and just clings to you with his face pressed into your sweater, swaying slightly. You press your lips together, lean down and grab him around the hips. He gasps and goggles into your face as you pick him up and toddle the few steps over to set him back down on the seat of his booth with a grunt. Another superhuman feat made possible by Papyrus, you suppose.

“I’m _sorry_ ,” you say again, cupping Sans’s broad, weary face between your heated palms. “I just...we needed _time_ ,” you emphasize.

His hands come up to hold your wrists, and he strokes them fondly with his thumbs.

“you’re not wrong. i don’t...like it, but if we… gotta wait.” he glances to the side. “it’s changing,” he rasps, eyes unfocused, disturbed and oddly...elated? Hopeful? The same thing Alphys had said before. “we just gotta _wait_. guess waiting takes time, right? you say got us some, and i believe you. and in the meantime, i...”

He makes a vague, throatless swallowing noise, then his head rolls back on his spine, expression open and needy. He looks a little less tired, but even more vulnerable.

“d’you love me?” he asks, voice breaking as he blinks up at you.

You crush him against your chest, and this time he doesn’t suppress his shudder as your fingers press the back of his skull.

“Yeah, I do. I love you. I really, really...I _do_.”

He moans vaguely as he clings to you, and you press your lips to the tepid bone of parietal, frontal. You run your fingers over the top of his skull again, and his arms snake around you and squeeze you tight enough to make you grunt. “I love you,” you repeat.

“ _fuck,_ ” he mutters harshly, phalanges tangling in your shirt to pull you down even closer as he tilts his face up. “love you too. yeah, kiss me. jus’...” His hands shake as he brings them to your face, but they steady themselves as he strokes your jawline gently, coaxing your lips to his teeth. You press your mouth to his grin sweetly, feel his breath catch as your tongue darts out against it. Again as you pepper light kisses across his chin, down his jaw. He gives a tight, creaking exhale as he tilts his head back to expose his vertebrae as he pulls you even closer, his grunt making you blush as you delicately apply your tongue there, too.

He starts to guide your hand under his shirt but stops when you hesitate, breathing heavily.

“Sans,” you say quietly but clearly. “Um. Do you really want to fuck me in the booth of a public restaurant?”

“yeah,” he answers immediately, quiet but fervent. “but i’m not gonna ask you to,” he sighs resignedly. “h-how bout...” He shivers again, and you stroke his skull soothingly. “stay with me?” he whispers.

“Yeah. As long as you want, okay? You need anything?”

“maybe jus help me get this cleaned up, an...ask grillbz to make me some tea,” he rumbles vaguely, clonks his forehead against your collarbone affectionately. “he’ll know. i’m fuckin shitfaced.”

He squeezes you one more time, then shoves his hands back into his pockets, flops onto his back with his feet dangling and starts snoring almost immediately.

You sigh, and when you turn around Grillby’s looking at you again. You head over, give him a nod and take one of the bussing bins out of its rack, return to the table and start stacking the glasses in there. It’s going to take two trips, but when you turn around you see Grillby at the door to the back. He pushes it open for you and gestures you inside with his head. You sigh and trundle past, carrying the heavy bin you’d never attempt on a day you hadn’t been the beneficiary of Papyrus’s amazing aura of health. Incidentally, your legs have never felt less broken.

You set the bin down next to the sink where he indicates, and he turns toward you significantly. You nod preemptively in case he wants to say anything, but he just waits.

“he asked for tea,” you say finally, blushing. “he said you’d know?”

… _i do._

Your mouth just kind of hangs open.

… _Why don’t you finish clearing the table, then come back here. I’ll have it done by then._

“I,” you whisper. “Okay, I can-”

… _You do realize you’re not_ obligated _to feel awkward? I mean, you can if you’re enjoying yourself. But just on the chance that you’re not._

You exhale shakily.

“I fucked up, Grillby,” you admit, shamefaced. He makes a crackling noise you can’t really parse.

… _Sans isn’t the kind of person you need to worry about that with. Just take care of him for now._

You sigh, and just nod twice before you leave to go finish up. The promised tea is steaming on the stainless steel counter of the kitchen when you come back with the second load of empties, which smell different than the usual cherry scented stuff you and he drink together. This is almost...pine-y? Not in a cleaning detergent sort of way, more in a possibly-edible, almost-citrus way. Well, whatever. The tea smells weird too, but totally different. Savory? Almost like the noodles Alphys made you in her car that time.

The mug’s the size of a beer stein, and you grab a dishtowel to protect your hand from the heat since you need both to carry it back out. Grillby acknowledges you with another short plume of smoke as you turn to push the door with your shoulder, and you exhale the worst of your weird emotional tension out as best you can. Sans is still passed out when you get there, so you set the mug down and wipe the table with the dishtowel; a few splats of half-dried ketchup and some rings come away but otherwise the cleared surface is less dirty than your coffee table at home is half the time.

It’s possible that even in this state, Sans still cleans up after himself here. You wonder if he does the same at home with Papyrus, since he really seems to complain about Sans’s slovenly habits a lot. Who knows. You step over to look down as the slumbering skeleton, then reach out and rub his tibia lightly. He snorts and twitches, but doesn’t rouse so you hold his ankle, wiggle his leg a bit.

“Sans,” you say softly. “Your tea’s ready. It smells like ass.”

“mmm,” he replies. One of his sockets opens, the point coalescing inside reluctantly. “...ass.”

You extend a hand, and he grips it to haul himself back upright.

“thanks,” he mumbles, then grabs the mug in an almost resigned manner, clinks the rim against his teeth and just tips it up. Keeps on going, and you sit down next to him, waiting for him to be done. It takes a bit, but he manages to drain the mug in one go. It’s moderately impressive.

He catches a drip on his sleeve as he finally lets the mug hit the table, glances over toward the bar.

“grillbz in the back?”

You nod. “What kind of tea is that? It smells kind of...off.”

“eh. not really tea, more like uhhh….soup? i dunno. made outta seaweed. ‘sea tea’.”

You snort. “Is the name why you like it?”

He grins. “never said i liked it. just gets whatever outta your system, perks you up.”

“Like a cup of coffee to sober up?”

“nope,” he replies with a tilt of his head. He seems less maudlin already. “this _works_. coffee just makes you drunk and jittery.”

“Good point,” you acknowledge, and you’re about to say something else when a crowd of Dogs open the door noisily and take seats up at the bar. Grillby returns from the back to take their orders, and you watch him bustle around behind the counter for a few minutes in contemplative silence.

“it’s already past happy hour,” Sans comments. “but i got time for another nap, i think.” he glances over at you. “that okay?” You nod, and he shimmies sideways until he’s right against you, then turns and tries to lay on you.

“Just a second,” you giggle, then rest your back on the wall with your legs tented so he can use you as a lounge chair. He grins and takes advantage of your new position, wiggling in until he gives a long, slow sigh of satisfaction that turns almost instantly into a snore.

He truly is a master.

The Dogs order a bunch of burgers, eat them, then of all things start picking up chairs and moving them around. It doesn’t seem like the best idea on a full stomach, and sure enough the biggest, fluffiest dog ends up clutching at their midsection and goes to lie down in a booth for a little bit. The rest soldier on with relative ease, although one of them (Doggo, if you remember correctly), keeps stepping outside. He smells like meaty smoke a little more each time he returns.

The rest of the regulars arrive in twos and threes as you idly catch up on a few humanities journals while your study buddy has what sounds like a very satisfying snooze half-reclined on your midsection, and a few of them nod over at you without approaching. You give them a serene smile each time you notice, although you’re sure you don’t always. Well, hopefully they know better than to take it personally. You’re scowling down at an especially egregious article asserting that monster knowledge should be _more_ restricted, perhaps spurred by morally suspect political interests in disengaging India from the supposed tyranny of magic-based power grids (actually when you think about it, doesn’t the changeover completion date coincide to the day before Sans ended up exhausted at ARTBALL? Well, best not to dwell on that for now) when an especially large group pushes their way in through the door. You glance up and notice there’s a lot more people here than you’re used to for this time of day, and they're _all_ monsters.

As far as you can tell, almost all the monsters you know are from Snowdin originally are here, too. Is it some kind of special occasion? Maybe one of those monster holidays, or… The next pair to push their way into the dim interior turn out to be Frisk and MK, who just wave (or nod, in MK’s case) at you before going to sit up at the bar.

“Hey, sleepy skull,” you mutter and wiggle, jostling the cozy skeleton lying half on top of you. “Is there something going on tonight? A ton of people just showed up. MK and Frisk are here, and the Dogs are moving the furniture around.

“mmm?” The bag of bones in your arms stirs, tilts his skull up at you. “mmm. i dunno. here for my show, probably. paps said he’s coming tonight, i think.”

His grins broadens as you stare down at him in disbelief.

“heh,” he smirks. “thought i was kidding? what can i say, i’m a natural.” He shrugs.

“You have a-” you frown furiously, remembering a few references he’s made to... “-a _comedy_ show?” you ask incredulously.

His sockets flatten on the bottom, and he looks like he might burst into giggles at any moment.

“that depends on who ya ask,” he practically squeaks with mirth.

“Oh my _god_ , Sans” you say, feeling a grin start to steal across your own face.

“my brother’s not even here yet, an you’re already steppin’ on his lines? oof, s’gonna be a battle royale tonight, but i still gotta live up to my name. the show must go on,” he remarks with fake wistfulness, slightly spoiled by the back of his fist crammed into a yawn-yell. The yell’s how you know he’s yawning, since his mouth doesn’t actually open for it.

His _name_? You try and think about what “sans” means in this context, and you’re pretty much stumped. Is it like...well, that’s a French loanword for ‘without’, but you have no clue what he’s referring to in this case. He wiggles a little further into your embrace, and you both quietly enjoy each other’s presence as more patrons slowly file in, taking seats around tables that have been moved to cluster around Lola’s booth.

“Wait a second,” you say after a little while. “You’re...wait. Papyrus, and... _Comic_ Sans?” You stare down at him, a little horrified as his sockets widen, teeth parting in surprise just before a loud guffaw practically doubles him over. An accomplishment considering he’s still mostly horizontal.

“Your name is _Comic Sans_ ,” you reiterate weakly. “Like the, what were they called. Those old typefaces? _Fonts_?”

He’s chuckling heartily now, clicking the backs of his fingers across his teeth. “you never figured it out? oh man, you’re killin me here...maybe you should go on instead? ‘anyone seen a fat skeleton around here? been boning him for months, but his name e-scapula-s me at the moment!’”

You give him the expression your sister terms your ‘Ultimate Buttface of Judgement’, since he’s so obviously earned it. “But that doesn’t even...it’s not a reference to _comedy_ ,” you object, and he just laughs harder. “It’s based on the lettering from comic books!”

“i like those too,” he wheezes.

“I can only imagine that kind of commitment to a bit,” you say with begrudging admiration.

“gotta have hobbies,” he grins shamelessly. He gives his one remaining star charm a tug to straighten his hoodie, then frowns. He pulls the neck of his shirt out and up over the bottom half of his face, gives it an audible sniff. “huh,” he tells the inside of his clothes. “someone must have hosed me off at some point this week. it’s not too bad, right?”

“You’ve definitely smelled worse,” you answer as he lets the fabric go. “Is this a regular thing, then?”

He just shrugs, like you figured he would. You watch some dogs moving tables around for a little bit, then much to your surprise, he actually answers you. His voice cuts through the increased muttering as the place gets more crowded, and the music blends right into the general hubbub of scraping furniture and clinking glasses.

“not like it used to be,” he sighs. “but yeah, i spend a while here sometimes. week or two. and you should know this isn’t like bars on the surface, even though it’s...on the surface. obviously. heartless shitholes, most of em. i know i toldja already, but this can’t make me sick like human stuff, okay? it’s not poison, it doesn’t do any harm. just makes it all a little easier to take for awhile. easier to talk about stuff, be with other people when you need to. as long’s you want...if you want it. forever, for some folks.”

He sighs heavily, squeezes the arms you have wrapped around him. “i don’t like telling other people’s business, but lola? i’ve _never_ seen her sober, okay? couldn’t even tell ya what that’d be like. she was...”

His eye lights follow Doggo and another Dog you don’t know carrying in two stacks of chairs.

“she was in the war,” he whispers, barely breathing the words out. “grillby too. they don’t talk about it, and its nobody’s _business_ but everyone knows. you spend a lotta time in here, maybe it’s best you know so you don’t say anything by accident. i hosed her off a few times myself, back in the day.”

“This is like...” you frown, thinking on how to put it. “Frisk stays with you and Papyrus, or Toriel, right? And Papyrus lives with you, and also...in the woods? On his own.” He laughs, but nods. “And this is pretty much _your_ other household, right? Or...family? Lola and...Grillby?”

“heh,” he pulls an arm out of your embrace to scratch at his neck a second. “you’re not wrong, i guess.”

“Wait a second,” you say slowly. “If monster drinks don’t mess you up, why were you stumbling all over the place when we were dancing earlier?”

“huh?” he frowns at you in bafflement for a long moment. “oh, that. cracked a metatarsal sparring with paps for the portrait thing. forgot about it til just now i guess,” he adds flippantly, sitting up and pulling a bottle of water out of his pocket.

“Oh, geez,” you say, feeling a little shocked, and unaccountably guilty. It’s not like you not being there made him get hurt, but… “Are you okay? Do you need healing? Crap, should I not have made you _dance_ with me? I’m so-”

He’s waving his hand at you in an attempt to stop the avalanche, and you shut your mouth with a click.

“it’s not a big deal, i’m tryin to tell you. just put a little spackle on there, closes right up on its own. it’s not even weight-bearing. just throws my balance outta whack til the stuff falls off when it’s healed. should be any day now. doesn’t hurt or anything like that.”

“Did you get _hit_ by something?” you ask a little breathlessly. “Isn’t that seriously dangerous for you?”

“ _course_ not,” he frowns at you, managing to sound offended. You don’t think you’ve heard that tone in his voice before. “papyrus doesn’t hit anything he’s not _trying_ to hit. i stepped wrong, is all.” His frown deepens, and you flush as you realize he took what you said as a slight to his brother. “i gotta say, wasn’t really expecting the third degree just cause you got a guilty conscience. not really a fan,” he adds pointedly, setting the water bottle on the table. A hot wave of shame washes over you once you recognize the reference to your own hypocrisy, and to your utter humiliation, your eyes prickle with tears. You hide them with your hand, but he’s already shifting away where he’d been leaning against you. Good lord. You really fucking biffed it.

“hey,” he says, turning to kneel in front of you, wavering in your vision. “i didn’t-”

You pull your hands away from your eyes almost angrily, and put your hands on his shoulders.

“We need to take better care of each other,” you say, voice higher than your usual register. You awkwardly turn yourself to sit cross legged facing him, and you can blearily see him doing the same, although he hangs one foot off the side of the booth seat to spare his cracked metatarsal.

You’re quiet for longer than you planned to be, but he waits for you. You’re staring down at the plush red covering of the booth (is it plastic? it’s not upholstery, or...well. That doesn’t matter; you’re just stalling), thinking furiously.

“I knocked everything between us out of whack, because I was...overcorrecting.” The hubbub of the bar is surprisingly soothing; it’s the same kind of public-but-private ambience you’ve felt here so many times before. Everyone knows, but it’s nobody’s business. He’s right, and you’ve still got him by the shoulders like a shield between you and the rest of the place.

“Because it was already drifting the other way, wasn’t it. We didn’t really define our terms very well at the beginning, and maybe we...well. Not ‘should have’, because we can now. Right?” you don’t actually look up but you know he’s listening. He always listens.

“What we have is a, a connection. I’ve got this quote. ‘A connection’s the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.’”

You finally look up at him. His face is unreadable again, and you really wish he would stop coming up with new facial expressions to challenge and baffle you. You never want him to stop.

“you asking me to go steady or somethin?” he asks.

You feel your face harden, but your voice comes out cracked and soft.

“ _Why did you stop bringing me hot dogs?”_ you whisper, heartbroken. His eyes flicker guiltily and hit the floor; you see that millimeter of black space appear between his teeth. They’re perfectly aligned when his mouth is shut, despite the fact that his jaw’s fused on one side. You can only see that the space is crooked when he opens his mouth, like now. Looks like he finally ran out of snappy comebacks.

“Don’t just _give up_ ,” you rasp fervently, sliding your hands down to grip a clothing-wrapped humerus on either side. “It’s _rude_.”

His teeth stay parted but you see him nod, almost imperceptibly. But you perceive it, because you were hoping for it. The sounds of this space filling with the people he’d kept hope alive in for who knows how long (decades? centuries?) lift your spirits as you listen and wait, and you consider that you’ll do what you need to do in order to give him the same thing, to give _yourself_ that same chance. Even if it’s rough, or inconvenient, or, you know. Mutilates you. Whatever.

“rude, huh?” he rasps finally. “sound like you’ve been hanging around paps too much.”

You purse your lips, but an all-too-familiar corvoid shout from outside that somehow manages to cut through the increasing din inside freezes the words in your throat.

“Do you like, _literally_ summon him that way? Or does it just seem like it?” you ask instead, and let him go with an only slightly awkward pat.

“both, maybe,” he exhales in relief, and he bumps your shoulder with his lightly as you both sit in the booth side by side in a more conventional way. He finally cracks his bottle of water open and drains it. The door bursts open as he tucks the empty back in his pocket, and neither of you flinch since you already heard him coming. You do notice it got dark outside at some point while you weren’t paying attention.

“SANS! I CAN SMELL YOU FROM-OH, HELLO FRISK AND MONSTER KID! I DID NOT REALIZE YOU’D ALSO BE ATTENDING THE GLORIOUS DEBACLE THIS EVENING! HAVE YOU EATEN? HOW IS THE REGRET? PUNGENT, OR MERELY PASSING?”

The world’s tallest living skeleton ambles over to the bar and orders a milkshake, chatting pleasantly enough with Frisk and MK, although a few of the Dogs move away in increments until they’re close to where Lola rests her head on folded arms. She peeks up when they come over, drains the refilled glass on the table in front of her as they greet her, then resumes her former position as the Dogs nod and take seats at a table nearby.

Sans glances at you surreptitiously, smirking a little.  
“he yelled at ya, huh?”

You emit a put upon sigh.

“Sort of? It’s...hard to say.”

He gazes serenely at his brother, who is now alternating rubbing his fingers on the bar and brandishing them at Frisk, explaining something that appears extremely important but is slightly quieter. His hot pants and crop top combo is the same dark wine as the bedding set you’d picked out the time he’d taken you blanket shopping, and you wonder if maybe that’s his way of making it up to you.

“yeah,” Sans sighs softly. “he’s got a way of doing that.” He looks around the now-packed bar. The duck-shaped barflies have occupied their usual stools, and it’s a good thing those Dogs brought in extra chairs because they’re nearly all taken now. In fact, as you watch Papyrus, Frisk and MK grab their glasses (Papyrus’s liter or so of milkshake has no fewer than three tiny umbrellas and two kabob-sized skewers of maraschino cherries, although in all other respects it appears to be a plain vanilla confection) and take seats at a table close to Lola’s booth.

“just about time then,” Sans smiles at you softly, then winks. Leans in to be kissed, then shimmies out of the booth. He staggers a little on the landing, but steadies himself with a hand on the now-cleared table.

“Break a foot,” you call after him, then blow a raspberry at his back as you stand up, too. He turns and chuckles over his shoulder at you, then heads directly toward Lola’s booth without stopping to talk to anyone, nor does anyone stop to talk to him. You come to the table seating a skeleton, a human, and a lizard monster, who are all deep in conversation regarding whether or not maraschino cherries are made of real cherries that have been bleached and colored, or if they’re actually made of a special seaweed that Undyne apparently calls ‘ice cream.’ Despite this, they each meet your eyes and nod without stopping or pausing the heated debate. You think Sans is speaking as he leans over the back of the seat, and although Lola’s head doesn’t pop up you’re pretty sure they’re having some sort of pleasant conversation, based on his easy changes in expression.

Frisk pushes a full glass toward you, and you blink in surprise as you see it’s full of the cherry-flavored drink you usually have with Sans. They wink at you, hands still flashing at Papyrus in support of the “cherries are made of cherries” position. MK seems undecided, but willing to be swayed by the most vivacious locutor left standing. It’s a close match, and you’ll drink to that.

Then Papyrus’s teeth slam shut in the middle of a sentence, and his head swivels back to face forward. You follow his sockets to their target. It seems that Sans is now standing on the table of Lola’s booth, holding an upside-down (and thankfully empty) ketchup bottle under his chin with a shiteating grin of anticipatory, almost sadistic glee. The last few stragglers come to stand in the back of the clustered tables, since all the chairs are taken by now.

“how many skeletons does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

Everyone groans in raucous unison; he waits a beat with a breathless grin.

“jus’ one, but you gotta buy me a drink before you take me back to yer lightbulb!” he supplies with gusto, even though nobody asked. You look around the slightly-dimmer-than-usual interior of the bar. You’ve never seen so many people grinning that hard and booing that loudly simultaneously. The only one not booing is Papyrus, who opts instead to heckle.

“THAT’S DISGUSTING, SANS!” he hollers. “ALSO, NO ONE’S USED LIGHTBULBS IN FIFTY YEARS?? AND YOU’D NEVER FIT ANYWAY!!”

Sans just winks shamelessly, finger-guns him with a little flourish of his thumb. “ _tibia_ honest, i almost cut that opener until i found out you were comin’ tonight, bro. gotta save the classics just for you. but i got a million of em, specially for this crowd here.”

Lola’s actually sitting up for once, leaned back in her seat. She doesn’t seem very concerned about the slippers trampling an inch or two away from her relaxed, furry fingers as they rest on the table, toy with her glass. She doesn’t bend her neck up to watch him or anything, just listens and nods as she stares placidly into space with an easy smile.

Sans doesn’t quite have room to pace, but he gives the impression of doing so very convincingly until he comes to an abrupt stop, sockets rounded as if he’s just noticed something appalling.

“doggo!” he hollers in mock-offense. “is that a _bone_ in your mouth, or you just happy to see me, eh? come on, man, the kids are here!”

Frisk rolls their eyes, runs a thumb along their eyebrow in an unconscious echo of one of Sans’s idiosyncrasies, and MK snickers. Doggo laughs uproariously around the bone-shaped dog treat between his teeth while Frisk extends their middle finger up and above their head at Sans, grinning indulgently.

He clutches his hand to his chest dramatically, miming a cardiac event in an organ he doesn’t actually posses. “you see that, folks! what am i gonna do with all these Dogs corrupting our innocent youth? not that frisk counts, a course. who here _hasn’t_ been on a date with the underground’s freshest flirt?”

Sans smirks at the ripple of laughter his commentary brings, and another round of giggles passes through the crowd as MK raises their tail ironically. He launches directly off that into a surprisingly heartfelt anecdote about Toriel’s baking habit. The point of it turns out to be an excruciatingly lengthy setup for three goat related puns...except they’re all just replacing the word “got” with “goat”. A slime in a bow tie interrupts the fourth by chucking an empty fry basket at his skull, which Sans turns casually on his heel to avoid.

“made it to four this time before i broke ya, eh craig? a new record! well, not to toot my own horn, but-”

Lola’s arm shoots up suddenly, brandishing what appears to be a shiny brass...oh god. That’s a _trombone_ , isn’t it. Sans snatches it without looking, then tosses the empty ketchup bottle he’s been pretending to use as a microphone up into the air. Despite its showy spin, it lands perfectly in Lola’s furry fingers to be disappeared back underneath the table.

Sans presses the trombone to his teeth and somehow manages to produce a few bars of a jauntily obnoxious tune that makes everyone there howl (literally, in a few Dogs’ case) with laughter, although you don’t really get it.

Frisk catches your eye. “It’s his old ringtone from underground,” they explain. “That’s, um...a song his phone played when someone sent a message. Except he was always pretending to ‘lose’ it in Grillby’s, and it was constantly going off because he’s popular,” they add, grinning. “It used to drive everyone crazy trying to find it so they could shut it off. One time Grillby found it inside a sealed jar of pickles.”

The music cuts off, and the ketchup bottle’s back by the time you pull your eyes away from Frisk.

“give it up for my beautiful assistant lola, everyone,” and there’s a smattering of polite applause. A few wolf whistles, too. “and the hottest barkeep formerly of the underground, grillby! hey, you know why grillbz lets me keep an open tab here? s’ cause i’m always-” he pauses and winks, “-a little _short_!”

The jokes don’t get less atrocious as the routine wears on, but you notice he manages to tell a joke or a story about absolutely everyone present in the bar, even the ones you don’t know. When he gets to you, he starts making double entendres about “hot dogs” and “bone zones” that get bigger laughs than you were expecting, before you remember that both Dogs and genitals have slightly more loaded cultural contexts for monsters than they do for humans. He almost manages to make you blush. Well, he did say he was going to work your sex life into his routine and you never explicitly (ha ha) told him not to, so you can’t say you weren’t warned.

“Where’s an empty fry basket when you need one!” you holler at him, and he pulls the bottle-mic away for a second to giggle and meet your eyes warmly. He moves on to a few bits about Mettaton’s legs and their improbable lengths (Papyrus gets pink during those), makes a bunch of references to a mousehole that also seems to be a double entendre of some kind, and eventually starts to wind down into anecdotes that approach nostalgia without giving into it entire.

After the third time you see him wipe his head with his sweater-wrapped fist and forearm, Lola produces the trombone once more. He takes it with his left hand and just hands her the bottle gently with his right instead of doing any more fancy throws or sleight-of-hand. He sits with a clack and a thud on the edge of the table and begins a surprisingly poignant tune (considering the instrument) that seems to soften everyone’s posture at once. After a few moments the patrons begin chattering amongst themselves, some of them standing to walk back to the bar and give Grillby their orders. You realize the show’s over without any sort of applause from the crowd, corny entreaties to try the burgers from Sans, or any other acknowledgement of completion that you’re accustomed to.

Frisk has six empty glasses lined up in front of them now, and is leaning in against MK’s shoulder with a cheeky grin. They must have been trying to convince them of something, because MK nods and stands up, and Frisk leads them to the empty floorspace back behind the tables. Frisk meets your eyes seemingly by accident, then slowly raises their hand to flip you the bird too for some unknown (possibly unknowable) reason, before breaking into their huffed laughter and grabbing MK around the shoulders...oh.

They’re _dancing_ , now. Almost as badly as you and Sans, but not quite.

You turn to look back at where he continues his masterfully heartfelt dooting next to his sexy assistant, who appears to have returned to only partial consciousness. Although his sockets are closed at first, he opens one as if he senses you seeking him out. He winks, then looks behind you to see Frisk and MK dancing. Something in him visibly relaxes. He closes his eyes and slows it down even more, starts messing with the melody a little. You realize it’s actually another arrangement of the same annoying tune from before, at least the bare bones of it reworked into something between a dirge and a corny lounge version. He’s getting pretty experimental, actually. Just jamming right the fuck out all over the audible spectrum, and here you never even knew he played an instrument. Didn’t know he _could_ play one, considering he doesn’t have lips, cheeks, or a tongue. Comic Sans the Skeleton (MS?), sad jazz dad trombonist extraordinaire.

You look over to Papyrus, meet his eye sockets and hold out your hand with a hesitant smile. His expression fades from an intent frown directed at his brother to something unreadable, then softens as he nods and stands up. You don’t mention anything about his weird yelling while you were in your sickbed, and he doesn’t say anything about feeling deceived by your request for him to distract his brother while you threw yourself of a cliff, basically.

You lead him to the empty space occupied by the softly swaying Frisk and MK, and now an inebriated Dog and the tie-clad slime (Craig?). As for the actual dancing you decide it’s probably best to let him lead, and hold tight to the hope you don’t scuff his patent leather boots by stepping on them.

“How did the sparring go?” you ask after a minute or so of being guided around in a manner meant to minimize your damage, you assume.

Papyrus sighs instead of just saying ‘sigh’. “OTHER THAN THE METATARSAL INCIDENT? BETTER THAN I EXPECTED, ACTUALLY.”

“I’m glad,” you reply warmly. “I...I can’t wait to see the new work, once it’s done.”

“OF COURSE, BUT YOU’LL STILL HAVE TO. IT’S NOT LIKE I CAN PUT YOU IN A BAG, CALL IT A TIME MACHINE THAT TRAVELS THROUGH TIME AT THE SPEED OF REGULAR TIME AND LEAVE YOU THERE UNTIL IT’S FINISHED. YOU HAVE A FAMILY AND A JOB, AFTER ALL.” Papyrus lets himself get distracted a moment, but manages not to flinch as your foot comes down on his perfect black patent leather thigh high boot.

“Sorry,” you mutter. “Maybe we should sit down. I don’t want you to end up with a metatarsal incident either.”

“NONSENSE,” he replies easily. “I’M THE ONLY ONE WITH THE CONTROL OVER THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE REQUIRED TO BREAK _MY_ BONES. FORESEEABLE ACCIDENTS, AREN’T,” he hollers like it’s some sort of common saying. Well, maybe he’s coining them. Both brothers agree on the whole “gotta have hobbies” philosophy, you've noticed.

“I’m surprised Toriel didn’t make it tonight,” you comment instead. “Or Alphys and Undyne, either. It was a pretty great, uh. Show?” you’re not a hundred percent sure what exactly to call whatever Sans did tonight, but you have to admit you were entertained by it.

“OH, THEY CAME LAST NIGHT,” Papyrus says almost absently...oh. He’s frowning over at the slime and Dog, who’ve apparently decided it’s a great night for dry humping while standing up and calling it dancing. And...okay, now Frisk’s noticed too, but reacts only by extending one of the arms they’d had wrapped around MK’s narrow upper body, and flipping them the bird. They manage to keep it aimed squarely at the other couple as they slowly circle each other around the dance floor, although they seem too wrapped up in each other to really notice or care.

“Um. Why does Frisk keep doing that? Did they just learn how or something? They seem kind of old to...”

Papyrus is shaking his head disgustedly. “SANS TOLD THEM THAT WAS THE SNOWDIN SECRET HANDSHAKE A DECADE OR SOMETHING AGO, AND THEY’VE BEEN EXACTING VENGEANCE EVER SINCE BY PRETENDING THEY NEVER FIGURED OUT THAT IT’S ACTUALLY A RUDE GESTURE. IT’S _VERY_ IMMATURE,” he demurs with a convincing flutter of his sockets, ignoring the irony of that disingenuous little tidbit.

“Wait a second,” you say, brain finally catching up to the conversation from three minutes ago. “Toriel was here last night?”

“OF COURSE. IT WAS HER TURN. THE NIGHT BEFORE IT WAS ALPHYS AND UNDYNE, THEN...” He finally looks down at your face.

“TONIGHT WAS SANS’S SIXTH SHOW IN A ROW. MY BROTHER IS UNQUESTIONABLY THE BEST AT BEING THE WORST COMEDIAN TO EVER PERFORM. HIS COMMITMENT TO THE OPPOSITE OF EXCELLENCE IS UNMATCHED.”

You just gape up at him, then watch him fail to flinch yet again as you feel his shoe crunch under yours.

“Sorry,” you mumble again.

“TOMORROW NIGHT WILL BE THE FINAL INSTALLMENT OF THIS ESPECIALLY UNSALVAGABLE COMEDIC DEBACLE, BUT DESPITE THE SHAME HE BRINGS UPON SKELETONS EVERYWHERE I WILL WELCOME HIM HOME WITH OPEN ARMS AFTERWARD NONETHELESS,” he adds, literal tears of pride and love welling up in the corners of his sockets.

He stares over your head at where Sans dootles and tootles ever more experimentally. You think he switched the whole thing into a minor key at some point, and the resulting progression of notes is growing a bit discordant now. Papyrus’s sockets narrow, and he stops attempting to dance you around, and takes your hand in his massive gloved one to wordlessly lead you back to your table. Taking your seat coincides with Sans’s trombone cutting off with a final, decisive bleat. The ambient music of the bar comes back in over the speakers after an uncanny moment of relative silence, during which you see him shuffle back around to hand his instrument to Lola. He rummages in his pocket for a long moment, then hands her something else with a nod and a gentle smile. It might be money, it might not be. Who knows.

His head comes up and he sees you sitting with his brother. He waves tersely at someone behind you, then shuffles right over to the table.

“mind if i have a seat?” he asks. You shake your head and frown in bafflement as to why he’s asking, then his wicked grin makes you regret your decision. He grabs the back of your chair and slams his hand on the table, swings himself up fast enough to make you squawk in alarm, suspends his body to hook his legs over until his bony ass comes to rest in your lap. He rocks back a little to kick his slippered feet like a pinup girl, hanging off his straightened arms.

“don’t mind if i do,” he mumbles shamelessly up at you, then rocks back up to press his teeth against your cheek.

“You’re going to give me a fucking heart attack with that shit,” you mutter peevishly, but he just laughs some more.

“you already forgive me,” he chuckles.

“I DON’T,” Papyrus barks from across the table. “BUT I SUPPOSE IT’S NOT AS IF YOU HAVE A _CRACKED BONE_ IN YOUR FOOT OR ANYTHING! OH, WAIT! PERHAPS MY FLAWLESS MEMORY HAS SPONTANEOUSLY GENERATED AN UNPRECEDENTED CAPACITY FOR FLAWS! BECAUSE IF I RECALL CORRECTLY, I-OH, _HELLO_ GRILLBY! COME HERE OFTEN?”

He really has a way of sneaking up on people for someone literally made of incandescent flames.

“YOUR SOLICITOUSNESS IS VERY MUCH APPRECIATED BUT IT WOULD SEEM MY BROTHER HAS HAD ENOUGH TO DRINK FOR TONIGHT, BASED ON MY DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA OF RECKLESSNESS, DISREGARD FOR BODILY-”

“i’ll be home in the morning, paps,” the skeleton in your lap drawls casually, wrapping his arms around your shoulders and pressing his head against you like a needy housecat. “looks like gotta cancel my last gig. i’m feeling pretty bushwhacked about now,” he sighs, then gazes up at Grillby. “you wanna bring us two smooth regulars, hot stuff? Nothing like switchin it up for my last night here.”

You open your mouth to order something to eat, since you’re not sure if you’ve actually had anything today, when a low, blatantly sexual growl in your ear makes you start.

“gotcha somethin, babe. right down here.”

Sans brandishes a hot dog very, very suggestively in his lap.

“get it while it’s hot.”

Grillby’s already fled, and Papyrus...well. That’s a facial expression. He leans forward intently until he’s about six inches away from his brother’s grinning skull.

“YOU KNOW THAT THING I SAID ABOUT HOW I’D NEVER, EVER DISOWN YOU NO MATTER WHAT?”

Sans and Papyrus mad dog each other for a solid and silent 30 seconds.

Without another word, the world’s tallest living skeleton stands, turns on his shiny, booted heel and stalks stiffly over to where Frisk has decided to have a nap in the middle of the erstwhile dance floor. MK is using their bulk as a sort of lounge pillow as they watch something on their monster phone, the humpy couple staggering around them intermittently without managing to fall over most of the time.

Sans is giggling almost hysterically in your lap, and you listen to him with a small smile of your own, grabbing the hot dog out of his lap and taking a bite while you watch MK relinquish custody of the unconscious Frisk to Papyrus.

“Is he actually pissed, or…?” you mumble through a half-chewed mouthful.

“nah,” Sans says soothingly. “he just misses me... he’s a sentimental drunk is all,” he sighs, clonking your forehead with his lightly.

“Wait...what?” You glance over at the drained remains of Papyrus’s milkshake. “Is that thing...live?”

“sure is. equivalent of about twice what frisk had maybe? paps is just blowin off some steam. he’s good.” You and Sans watch as Papyrus leans down and grabs Frisk, then you whoop quietly in amazement as he somehow manages to deadlift their unconscious bulk and balance them on a hip, like they’re a toddler...or Sans. Except plus about 200 pounds.

“Holy _shit_ , he’s strong,” you whisper admiringly, shoving the dog in your mouth. “Doesn’t Frisk outweigh him by...I don’t know? Wouldn’t he just tip over? How much _does_ Papyrus weigh? You weigh more than you look like, too. He must be...” you turn your head to look at Sans, who seems perfectly content to just live in your lap from now on. You’re feeling pretty okay with it, too. “Heavy, right?”

Sans looks like he’s about to explode.

“he ain’t heavy,” he chokes out hysterically. “he’s my brother.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's my headcanon that the reason Sans's theme plays in Grillby's is because his favorite prank is hiding his phone in weird places around the bar and no one can find it and turn the damn thing off  
> *special thanks to ChocoboFangirl for catching a glaring continuity error I made, and also helping me fix it. <3 Please accept my masterfully heartfelt dooting


	31. sofa, so good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [trauma response, discussion of previous trauma]

Sans leans over you to grab his glass off the table, and you wiggle in protest as the edge of his ribcage digs in a little.

“sorry,” he mumbles absently. He drinks, and you smell cherries when he hands you the glass to replace on the table rather than squishing his bones into you again. This time the nature doc you’re watching has to do with ocean sediment and its extant flora and fauna. It’s also low demand, and you’ve been breaking into conversation on and off, sleeping when you’re tired, eating when you’re hungry, and cuddling when you crave it.

You wiggle back into him closely, bending your legs against his so they lock together, your bare toes reaching out half-aware to seek the sensation of bones inside socks. It’s funny how they seem sexier the more time goes on, even though you’d spent the entirety of your life previous considering socks neutral items of clothing. Not enough to give you some kind of fetish, but still mildly titillating.

“How’s the foot?” you ask again reflexively, then wince considering how many times you’ve asked him that same question long after the point where it’s been an issue. He emits a tolerant sigh.

“i’d ask ‘how’s the legs’, but I already know the answer’s ‘dead sexy’.” You can hear the smile in his voice without looking, and you relax again.

The reinstatement of hot dog nite had done a lot to ease the strain that had come between you and Sans ever since external circumstances had become more complicated, and your relationship along with them. After all, the parameters of “us” for you and him have continued to be “more of the same.” Although that definitions of “more” and “same” continues to expand, the _point_ for both of you has been more or less what you’re doing right now.

“animals are weird,” he comments absently after a little while, his smooth fingers stroking the skin just inside the hem of your t-shirt sleeve.

“That’s true,” you answer, savoring the play of bones massaging your flesh with their mild resonance. “But why do _you_ think so?”

“maybe cause we didn’t really have em underground, ya know,” he blathers pleasantly. “just bugs n stuff. snails, spiders. do fish count? well, they’re not like… sometimes they’re people, sometimes they're not. _animals_ aren’t people, but they’re...i dunno. can’t believe you just _eat_ em though,” he muses, the corners of his grin twitching. “doesn’t it make you feel weird? like maybe…?” He trails off uncertainly.

“Not really,” you answer. “Wait, aren't the spiders in Muffet’s food _sentient_?”

“that’s different,” he replies, sounding very certain.

“How?”

“s’ just...different,” he says frowning. “they know it’s gonna happen.”

“I’m gonna go with ‘it’s a cultural thing,’” you grin, leaning back on the pillows shoved beneath your head to look up at him.

“yeah, maybe. heh. talking about it’s kinda making me hungry again.” He’s rubbing your arm slowly, warming up his bones on you. You don’t mind at all; the blanket you’ve got pulled over you both on your spanking new couch (considerably wider than your old one specifically for the sort of thing you’re doing on it right now) keeps the warmth in just fine, and it’s not really cold out anymore. “or maybe it just makes me think i’m hungry.”

The shrapnel of hot dogs still litters the coffee table in front of the couch, but they’re kind of ossified (heh) at this point. Hot dog nite can go anywhere from four to 72 hours, after all. It’s not on a rigid schedule; more like a ‘from now until questionmark’ kind of deal.

“You wanna go to Grillby’s?” you ask, although you’re not particularly keen on moving at the moment.

“s’ closed, actually,” he mutters, surprising you into glancing up again. “forgot to tell ya. grillbz’s kid’s having a kid. he’s underground right now, doing the, uh. the thing.”

At this point you just roll over on your back so you can stare at him.

“Okay, so. _First_ of all. Grillby has a _kid_?”

“two of em.” He looks down at you fondly, shifts to accommodate your new position. He rubs your arm again, then moves to put his hand up your shirt, wiggling your soft belly a moment before coming to rest right where your ribcage starts. It’s nice.

“guess he never told ya, huh? they’re all grown now anyhow, and they live in underebbot still. fuku’s running the old bar, and heats is doing whatever the hell he wants. and that’s mostly nothin. kid could give _me_ lessons in slackin off.” His sockets narrow as he starts laughing. “grillbz used to go around saying that’s how everyone knew i was the one knocked him up, that’s why he calls me-” he cuts himself off at the look on your face, shakes his head with an apologetic wince.

“sorry. grillbz doesn’t need anyone _else_ to have a kid, he’s just joking. for him, they can just...happen,” he explains, making a vague sort of motion with his hand under your shirt. “they can happen the usual way too, though.”

You goggle at him.

“Like...budding? Asexual reproduction?” You know he knows what you mean considering the sheer amount of nature docs you’ve watched together at this point.

“maybe?” he says, considering. “never really got all the details on that, but it’s definitely not usual. some monsters, like elementals i think, are just like that... and he’s one of em. but that’s what fuku’s doin right now. guess she needs people around to bring her...food? talk to her? stuff like that. he and some a the regulars are down there keeping an eye and...” he rummages in his pocket, shuts his sockets a second. “nothin yet, i guess.”

“Is that what monsters normally do when they’re having a baby?”

“yeah, pretty much. not that different than what humans do.”

You frown, thinking about what little you know of monster reproduction. Blush a little, thinking of that one time.

“Monsters have babies or get… pregnant? -ish? from touching their souls together, right?” you ask.

He gives you an odd look. “Well, not _just_ like that, but...sorta? I mean, you’ve read the stuff on that, right?”

“Sure, but it doesn’t really explain the...well, the practical details? Or the cultural context?”

“it’s not like human stuff,” he says obliquely. “it’s not entirely a...physical? thing? people say it’s like, you jus _know_ it’s gonna happen at some point, then it does. so you let people know, they come over to bring stuff and keep an eye...” He trails off thoughtfully. “i’m not explaining this very well. maybe you should ask tori, i mean...it’s not like i _know_.” The longer he looks at you, the bigger his grin gets. “it’s not that easy, though. from what i’ve heard about making kids, from people that’ve done it,” he winks. “s’like, not something that happens by _accident_. not the same as human stuff. that bus don’t drive itself, not for us.”

He gets a little more thoughtful, maybe even..shy?

“but if you, um. once you get in there, it makes it seem like a _real_ good idea. best idea you ever had,” he giggles obscenely, hand sliding out of your clothes to rub at his cervical vertebrae self-consciously. “that’s why most people just _don’t_. like me. cause i don’t know if you noticed, but...” now he’s looking a little iridescent, “i got a good amount a self control. lot more than most people.”

He looks down and meets your eyes squarely. “...right up until _i don’t_.”

He breaks into laughter to ease his discomfort at the admission, but you just wrap your arms around him and give him a squeeze, along with a softer smile.

“I kind of like that about you, though,” you admit. “It’s sexy.”

“heh heh... geez.” He glances to the side, still shiny. “gotta say i’m glad you think so. but uh, s’not really my best quality.” His sigh’s on the heavy side; not saddened, but not particularly amused either. Whatever mood seemed to be coming on dissipates as something else appears to occur to him, and he decides to share it. It makes you feel good that he can just share his thoughts with you like this.

“still surprising you think that at all, if i’m honest.” His bony brow creases a second, then clears. “the _way_ you do, i mean. like i’m- same way a monster might think i’m sexy or something, i guess,” he finishes awkwardly.

 _Like I’m a person_ , you think he’d been going to say. Well, that’s extremely fucking sad, and also something you can unfortunately relate to. After all, how many people had you slept with that you’re pretty sure saw you just as a means to an end? Something to try out, rather than someone to be with. A novelty or a challenge; for some of them you were just something “different”. More than that, you know what people are like when they want to fuck something they’re essentially afraid of, and plenty of humans both fear and are drawn to difference. It turns their hands thoughtlessly cruel, their words dismissive and harsh.

You don’t say any of that, but his face softens, and you reach up to stroke it with your fingertips.

“I like your body because it’s _yours_ ,” you smile. “And I like your soul because it’s _you_ ,” you add salaciously, making him do his own magic-fueled version of blushing yet again. You might have cultural differences, but you’ve certainly picked up on the fact that these sort of direct compliments count solidly as bedroom talk (especially when soul-related); in retrospect you can see how you ended up unwittingly seducing him so completely in the first place. Oops. You coax him down to you for a light nuzzle, basking in the delicate touch of his pointed nasal bone as it traces over your nose, your lips parted to taste his dry, chalky breath.

The more time you spend around monsters, the more you’ve picked up on the way Sans is perceived by them. He’s certainly popular, but not considered particularly sexy like Chell, Mettaton, and Lola are. From what some of the Dogs have joked about, he’s also had a bit of a reputation among monsters of being somehow both appealingly available _and_ notoriously hard-to-get, however _that’s_ supposed to work. Then again, most Dogs have genitalia so there might be an element of projection there, too...it’s all incredibly complicated if you didn’t just grow up with it.

“eh heh heh… so my twitchy, oozing corpse body’s not bothering you, huh?” He almost sounds like Alphys when he laughs like that. It’s kind of adorable.

This is exactly what you’d been missing: the long, rambling conversations that have no points, only the wholesome curves of getting to know each other better, inside and out. He’s making a joking reference to the way he’d explained more about how his body works, like the difference between integral magic that’s part of his body, and the shed magic that comprises his tears, sweat, and...well, other things that make your face feel hot. There actually isn’t a difference, and although he’s told you that before, he expanded upon it.

There’s no membrane that keeps it in or anything like that, the magic doesn’t necessarily even really move; it _becomes_. His magic is part of him, then becomes _not_ part when he gets emotionally or physically agitated (for him, there’s not much difference between the two), and it’s also related to why he shakes. Turns out there are significant differences between him and other monsters as you’d suspected, like the fact that his physicality is limited to his bones. His magic doesn’t form static structures like skin or internal organs (which is why he can’t eat human food at all), and although his bones do have physical components those are still mostly magic, too.

The magic that holds his bones together is the same as what they’re made of, but its properties express differently in his bones than not-bones. The part of him that isn’t bones, depending on various factors he’d been less adept at explaining, is conditionally permeable to physical structures. Like _your_ body, for instance. It’s why you can put your hands right inside many of the spaces between his bones, although there are quite a few joints and smaller spaces that resist or prevent that entirely. A lot of those seem to be his sweet spots, too.

“Does my bloody animal-meat body bother _you_?” you shoot back, referring to some of the weirder conversations you’ve had late at night, especially when he starts pulling drinks out of his pockets. You’d had to point out that he’s made of magic _and eats_ magic, when he’d started rambling as if being made of meat and also eating meat is some sort of unthinkable transgression. Frisk had been right, you’re realizing more and more. Sans has a lot of odd, overly complex ideas about things that should be simple, and strange ways of easily explaining concepts that should be impossible. It’s a contradiction that’s part of what makes him so attractive to you.

He grins, furrowing his brow at you at the same time. “you know i’m into it.”

He’d been unaccountably fascinated by your meandering explanations of energy synthesis and biological realities thereof, and it makes you glad that you’d taken a more than a few related electives back in the day. It gives you fun ways to fill in the blanks during the nature shows, and you always feel a warm glow inside when he asks a question you can answer. Interestingly enough, he’d grown pensive when you’d brought up the way his shed magic just sinks into your body. Turns out you’re gaining some kind of negligible nourishment from it, much the same as you would from monster food. That’s fucking _hilarious_ , and had given you to opportunity to point out that various human effluvia also technically has nutritional value. Some more than others since they’re different, but his bodily fluids are all the same (and they _do_ scientifically count as fluid once they’re no longer part of his integral magic; they obey the laws of continuum mechanics for fluid entities. Who knew). It had made him blush when you’d commented that it might be why it feels good for you when it happens.

You play with his fingers a little, enjoying the contrast of dark skin and white bones. “Our bodies aren’t actually that much different when you think about it,” you muse. “We always talk about how we’re different, but we’re actually the same in a lot of ways too.”

“huh,” he replies, sockets ovaling happily. “how’d you figure?”

“Well, you’re still _shaped_ like a human skeleton, for whatever reason. I’m pretty sure I’ve got all the same bones you do, right? Unless you’re still hiding more of them in there than I’ve seen.”

He nudges your face with his nasal bone some more. “i think you found em all by now. all my favorites, anyways,” he snickers playfully. His fingers pull away from yours to touch your face lightly, then searchingly.

“huh. s’weird, i never really thought about it quite like that, but they’re in there.” You grin under his ministrations, then reach out to touch his face too. Laughing quietly, you both start touching the same bones in each other at the same time. His are a lot thicker and sturdier than yours, which makes sense considering their lack of insulating or supporting structures. He doesn’t even have cartilage, just magic that performs a somewhat similar (although definitely not the same) function. His skull is a lot less bumpy and crenellated than yours is, you’re sure; his face is much smoother than a human skull’s. It’s the magic in the bones themselves that makes his face, certain joints, and a few other parts of his body so flexible.

“We’re doing science now,” you giggle.

“boning up on our anatomy,” he answers playfully as he presses curiously underneath your mandible, feeling the softness where your tongue rests in the space there. His eye lights expand a little as you caress the inside of his chin lightly.

“Dang it,” you sigh. “That was one of the jokes I was saving for later. You beat me to it.”

He laughs quietly, unrepentant. “well, it _is_ later now. an it’s still funny,” he sighs as you wiggle into each others’ embraces, pulling arms around to press fingers along the same vertebrae...seventh cervical...first thoracic. “you’re a lil bigger than me, but your bones are smaller, i think. thinner,” he sighs as you each go under your shirts so you can touch even more, push even closer.

“You could say you’re...big boned?” you quip, not to be outdone. You lean back to waggle your eyebrows at him and are rewarded with a snort like tearing paper. You love his dry, throatless skeleton noises.

“mmm,” he hums happily, phalanges prodding gently at your hipbones and tickling a little. He pulls back when you tense, but keeps pressing at you in a different spot. Your fingers skirt his waistband in tandem.

“actually, i kinda _am_. takes a lot a magic to hold these things together, y’know. s’why my clothes look like that on me.”

“Takes a lot of rare steak to hold _me_ together,” you breathe into his neck, and you feel him making a pleased hum more than you hear it.

He pulls back to roll his forehead against yours, pressing his tiny, hard fingertips along your sacrum. Then his hands spread out flat on your skin, slide cleverly into your sweatpants to grab your hips. His palms test the knobs of your femurs under layers of fat and muscle.

“heh. i like these. wide like mine,” he says, then nuzzles down into the underside of your neck as you palm his bare, hard femurs where they socket into his pelvis. “guess i see what you mean.”

When his hands glide up your belly, you get a little bolder and reach in to touch his spine with the palm of your hand. You feel him suck in air through his nasal cavity. “lotta magic’s holding that together, too,” he breathes and runs his smooth, fixed grin along your soft jawline. “s’why i like that so much. you feel me in there, right?”

“Your magic? I can feel it, yeah,” you smile, rubbing your face down into the side of his, reveling in the expansive resonance as your forearm gets close to his ribcage. Your teeth touch the dimpled bone at the side of his grin lightly, and you close your lips so you don’t clack against each other. “It’s hard to describe, but I like it,” you add as the way his smoothly compressed metacarpals play across your skin sends a patient heat to coil in your lower belly. The texture of his spine as you slide your palm down towards his pelvis thrills you; he mirrors your caress enthusiastically, if a little inaccurately. On account of you having internal organs, muscle, and fat filling that space.

“i can feel you too,” he whispers as he rubs your skin encouragingly. “hot an soft...lil fuzzy,” he murmurs as his hand moves lower. “that okay?”

“Mmhmm,” you sigh in assent, then move your hand very tentatively to the front of his shorts. “Might as well break in the new furniture. What about you?”

“y-yeah,” he exhales, and relaxes into your touch. “how bout you do like i do? same as we were?”

“I like that idea,” you smile, and press your lips against his teeth. “Our bones are the same in there, too.”

“huh,” he considers softly as his phalanges slide into your loose, almost threadbare sweatpants. You put your leg up over his, brace it against the back of the couch since you’ve got all that meat in the way. He leads with his compressed metacarpals toward your mound, and your hot palm touches the twin bumps of his pubic tubercles as he inhales unevenly.

“i see what you mean,” he repeats, and you see his eye lights unfocus a little as his phalanges wrap under to touch your already-slick folds, pushes up gently with flattened fingers. You inhale as he presses back a little further, making your muscles tense pleasantly. “that’s the space,” he muses, arousal and a hint of wonder in his voice. When you kiss his skull you can taste the lightest ghost of his magic there. You wrap your fingers up and under into the space behind his pubis, but don’t curl your fingers enough to touch the back of it. Just as much as he touches you, fingers testing nothing but magnetic, lightly resistant magic. You feel a small quiver go through his body, like an oscillation in the air.

“Do you feel it?” you ask quietly.

“yup,” he replies, tucking his face under yours a little. “not like in...in the smaller spaces, but yeah.” He presses his fingers against you, rocks his hand a little. You do the same, and you both breathe unsteadily together. “feels hot,” he whispers after a minute. You relish the way his magic has a resonant, enticing pull against your fingers as they curve oh so slightly into his pelvic inlet from underneath. He lifts his topmost femur, brushing it on the underside of your leg. He lets you brace yourself on it as he tilts his hips to grant you access.

He pulls his cupped hand forward, feeling the dip behind the bone again as you rock eagerly into his textured carpals. He inhales unevenly and lets it out in a quiet, barely-there moan as you do the same.

“You’re getting wet here,” you whisper as you feel his magic overflow to tingle into your palm. “That’s good, right?”

“heh,” he laughs weakly. “yeah. everything you do feels good.” You rub each other with increasing enthusiasm for a few minutes, breathing heavily into each other’s faces and pressing together intermittently. “can i touch you inside?” he asks breathlessly, and you think about it, nod against his forehead. You like the way his textured phalanges feel, and he has a way of getting you in the mood for that. “do it like that to me too,” he rumbles quietly, and you nod again, figuring it’s easy enough to mimic his touch.

He curls his fingers and pushes one of them inside you, draws the tip slowly back down pressing toward the front. The delicate quality of his touch makes you shiver in delight. You curve your middle finger in to mimic him as closely as you can, but he gasps and jumps a little as the tip of your finger brushes the inside of his pubic symphysis.

“Too sensitive?” you ask. “Want me to avoid that part?”

“n-no, i think it just, uh,” he stops to catch his breath. “try this, maybe.” He presses another phalanx inside you, using the bent lengths to create friction rather than fingertips. “you like that too?” You hum an affirmative, and this time when you rub the inside of his pubis he arches into it instead of away.

“... _yeah_ ,” he encourages in a long, breathy groan. Your soft noises join his as you both repeat your motions eagerly, and you lean up to kiss his face where he keeps trying to tuck it beneath yours. You use the inside of two fingers where they bend at the second joint to rock gently against the resistance in his pubic symphysis, then spread them to brush the bones on either side.

He tilts his skull back to look at you through narrowed sockets, the points floating there broad with emotion and sensation as the encouragement of his textured bones coax tension into your body. “can you, uh, rub the front too?” he requests tightly, sockets falling shut as anticipation shapes his features. You’re happy to oblige with the soft base of your thumb, and he cants his hips hard into your hand with a soft grunt.

“Is that okay?” you whisper. His body seems more agitated than usual despite the pleasure on his face, the tingle of his magic on your fingers. His bones seem warmer under your hand too, but that’s something you’ve noticed in his breath, his face, and sometimes in his joints when you’re touching each other like this. You don’t know if it’s borrowed from you or if he generates it himself, but it’s certainly a sign of arousal.

“don’t stop,” he groans as he presses against you eagerly, adding another finger to what he’s doing to you. You shudder and sigh as you tilt and open to accommodate, his unusual excitement becoming contagious quickly. “i dunno how it’s that...that good, but- mmm” his words dissolve into a quavering moan as you copy his technique, and he pushes his fingers deep in you again. Your hand’s almost wrapped around his pubic bones, and your two middle fingers hook the inside of the magic-packed joint between them, curving around to stimulate it insistently. He feels hot now, tingling-wet with shed magic, and almost...loose?

His arm tenses around your shoulders as he pulls your upper body against him tight and sudden, his breath hitching in sharply to be grunted out hot against your neck, cool as it’s sucked back in.

“oh shit,” he pants; it’s a high, surprised whisper. “ _fuck_ me.”

You don’t know why his reaction’s so intense, but it’s driving you out of your mind; you’re groaning and pushing against him just as much when his ceramic-smooth and nubbled fingers beckon you forward to grind against his carpals. You wriggle in desperately to get your mouth on his vertebrae, and he gasps when your tongue finds the tiny spaces there. His fingers curl into your shirt and begin to pull at the fabric insistently. His breath leaves him in a choked-off shout as he uses the leverage to shove his pelvis forward sharply, driving your fingers hard behind his pubis.

“ _please._ ” The soft, strangled cry escapes him as he grinds down on your lingering withdrawal, coaxing even more magic out into your palm. His sincere entreaty makes you break out into a sweat hot enough you’re glad the blanket’s been shimmied off the both of you at some point; no one’s ever clung and pleaded to you like this. The way he’s pulling at you so sweetly, driving his body onto your hand. His fingers make an obscenely wet noise as he generously fills you with the same thing he’s begging for. “ _please..._ i, i want...” The barely audible whine between soft, needy grunts finds your ears as bones in his pelvis thrust at you greedily; the bones pushed hard inside you finish his sentence rough and fast. His nasal bone presses your neck hard enough to leave a mark later as his whole body curls and tenses.

At the same time, there’s resonance and something like pressure as you rock your hand forward; you reverse the motion with the base of your thumb dragging up into the magic-packed joint in his pubis as he pants and writhes. Even more resistance the next time you curve into his pelvic inlet; his magic flows onto your hand, into your skin. You rub the front as he moans brokenly, but when you push your fingers behind it this time it feels so _tight_ , it’s almost-

Sans makes a strange hissing noise and flinches back, and you see his eye lights pin and dim. Before you even register movement, everyone’s hands are out of everyone’s pants, and he’s holding yours firmly in front of you with his damp phalanges.

They’re shaking.

“Are you okay?” you ask softly, alarmed.

He doesn’t answer, just breathes shallow and uneven, staring at nothing.

You wait.

“gimme a sec,” he whispers hollowly after about a minute and a half.

You let him hold your hands and wait some more as he attempts a few deep breaths without much success. Eventually one of his hands slips away, trembles down to the front of his shorts, flinches back.

“Did I hurt you?”

“nah,” he rasps. “jus...i didn’t...”

He’s looking at your face, but doesn’t meet your eyes. His other hand has crept back up to hold yours.

“you don’t know what that was?” He makes it sound like a rhetorical question.

“No,” you answer softly, honestly.

“course not,” he replies, almost as if to himself. “course you don’t. cause i never told you, an it still happened anyway.” He finally meets your gaze with a disturbed expression, like he doesn’t know quite what to say. But you’ve been thinking while you wait.

“Does your body want something you’re not ready for?” you ask quietly, and you hear him exhale sharply, and his eyes dart away again.

“might be a good way to put it,” he whispers.

“Do _you_ know what it was?” you try.

“yeah,” he admits unhappily.

“You don’t have to tell me,” you reassure him. “But if something I did caused that...if you don’t want it to happen, just let me know and I won’t do it anymore.”

His breathing’s getting a little better, but his eye lights are still barely visible.

“i mighta thought it was you before. i know better now. but it’s...like you said.”

“You’re not ready?” you coax, and he nods.

“might not ever be ready,” he whispers reluctantly. “but i still wanna show you. you should know. that okay?”

“Yeah, of course,” you reply.

Your hands are still in his. He guides one of them down to his pelvis, then inside his shorts instead of pulling them down, much to your surprise. His bones are still almost-hot, thrumming with agitated magic. He curves your fingers in toward his pubis again, where the strange resistance has increased as he shudders enigmatically. It feels a lot like the places between his bones where his magic carries the most tension, the ones where your body can’t go, and there’s something about it that feels almost solid, too. You hear him bite back a small noise as he pushes your two middle fingers up and _inside_ something. Not in the joint there, but just behind it.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“it’s trying ta give you something to work with,” he replies neutrally. You don’t know what you’re inside right now, but it’s definitely him. It responds with a flutter when you let out a shaky breath you didn’t realize you’d been holding. “guessing it’s cause you’re here, and you make me feel a certain way.” The expression on his face is like nothing you’ve seen before, and he doesn’t meet your eyes.

“Does it hurt?”

The expression increases as he delicately removes your fingers from the tight, warm space behind his pubis.

“i don’t know,” he whispers miserably before pulling your hand back out of his clothes. He’s holding your hands n his between your bodies again, squeezing them lightly. His aren’t shaking anymore. You lay on your sides facing each other, and you grope down to pull the blanket over you both as he continues.

“no idea why that’d happen _now_ , stead of all the other times we did stuff. maybe it’s... what we were talking about? how we’re kinda the same.”

“Wait. Did that happen to your body... because I’m human?” There’s no way you could be affecting him that much, right?

He’s nodding. Oh.

“I’m so sorry,” you whisper, horrified.

He finally looks up at you, and his sockets widen. “no, no…” he exhales, takes his hand back to click phalanges over one socket as he averts his gaze again. “it _happened_ cause i-” His hand strokes down your shoulder and upper arm, eye lights following the movement. Like you’re the one who needs soothing. “cause i wanted you to fuck me, i guess,” he finishes finally, grin flattened at the edges. “i really...”

Even though he’s upset, you can feel that he’s still warm, and the iridescence of his magic lends the curve of his frontal bone an otherworldly glow. He doesn’t finish his sentence.

He definitely seems like he wants to talk about this, but you’re so dumbfounded you’re not sure how to begin.

“Your magic tried to make something like what I have, so you could feel like...I felt?” He just waits passively, so you continue. “I didn’t know that could happen, and you didn’t...think it would. But you knew it was possible?”

“it happened before,” he replies sadly, managing to sag despite already being lying down. “long time ago. just a few times, i guess.”

“I’m gathering that you didn’t like it,” you comment tentatively. “you can tell me if you want.”

“no, it’s not so much that i...i dunno,” he says, looking haunted and confused. “first time that ever happened...” He sighs, shuts his sockets. “i knew he was scared a me. wanted to hurt me, cause bein scared pissed him off.” His sockets open, but he just stares forward blankly. “i shoulda _left_. that’s… not a good situation for me. you know why. i don’t know what i wanted to happen, but i guess- no. i _do_ know.”

He squeezes your hand a little. He’s telling the truth.

“i _wanted_ him to hurt me, and my body came up with a way for that to happen without jus’...killin me.”

“That makes sense,” you whisper, and he darts his eye lights up to meet your gaze for a long moment.

“wish it didn’t,” he replies, sounding a little sick. He makes a faint swallowing noise, looks away. “hurt so bad, didn’t even notice i had a dislocated hip til i tried to get up. guess it makes the magic weaker there when it’s happening. couldn’t take the weight.” He makes another odd noise. “i _wanted_ it, though,” he whispers. He looks like he figured something out, and he doesn’t like it much. “made me come, too. i didn’t know; jus’ felt… real sharp. didn’t realize til now cause... now i sorta know what that feels like? back then, though. thought i was dying and i didn’t care. i wanted it.”

He rubs his hip absently under the blanket.

“grillbz took care of it later. he took care of a lot of fucked up shit i did so nobody else had ta see me like that.”

“Sans,” you can’t help but whisper. “Did I hurt you?”

A bead of magic forms at the inner corner of his socket, and he releases your fingers to wipe it away.

“nah,” he breathes quietly. “it didn’t hurt. everything you do feels good to me. dunno why that’s so much harder to deal with.”

His fingers slide over his sockets with a light clatter, and his shoulders shake silently for a moment.

You bite back the urge to reassure him you won’t touch him like that again, because it seems like this is a lot more complicated than that. Instead you just tentatively come closer, and he goes eagerly into your arms with a heavy sigh. His face is still almost hot, and when you kiss his skull you can taste his magic a little. He slides in even closer toward you, tiny movements seeking you out. You know him well enough by now to figure out that even talking about that probably didn’t make him want to do this any less.

“You don’t want to me to touch it, right?” you say rubbing his humerus, his shoulderblade.

You feel his head shake against you.

“Do _you_ want to touch it?”

He leans back to look at you, and you can tell he’s surprised. “never thought a that,” he whispers thoughtfully, the edges of his grin softening. After a contemplative moment, he exhales slowly. “not right now, i don’t think,” he says, then goes a little iridescent. “not that i’m, uh.” He looks away. “not that i’m not interested,” he whispers quickly, and your insides quirk when you think of the echo of your own words, about unfamiliar yet possibly intriguing experiences to be had together. Not now though, even though his whole body’s still practically seething. You don’t think it’s him being upset, but he still seems a little too serious.

You give his shoulders a squeeze and pepper his face with little kisses; his smile is soft now, and even a little mischievous. In response, you trace his features with your lips, then on impulse push your nose into his nasal cavity, making him giggle. This always makes him giggle.

“What does it feel like when I do that?” you ask as you pull it out, followed by his amused exhale. He thinks for a second, then his hand comes up, the proximal of his thumb pressing down the fleshy tip of your nose firmly. You meet his eyes, then you both break into soft laughter, wriggling back into each other’s arms to shove your faces together some more.

“Are you done for now?” you ask mildly. “It’s good with me no matter what.”

He pulls back again to look at you, and his expression relaxes into indescribable tenderness.

“ya know… we’re always talkin’ bout _me_.” His hard fingertips stroke your face and shoulders encouragingly, almost hungrily, even though his voice is a little dry and teasing. “what _i_ like, and what i _don’t_ like, and _why_ …” His eye lights manage a convincing imitation of an eyeroll. “that’s enough a that for now.” His smooth bone arms slide around to pull you closer. He touches your forehead with his so you can gaze into his sockets. He knows what you like.

“i still wanna do stuff. but i wanna make _you_ feel good,” he rumbles intently. “good as you make me feel all the time. that okay?” Oh, wow. That’s really doing something to you. He’s pressing his chest against yours now, and he can feel your reaction. You can tell by the way his breathing changes.

“Yeah,” you whisper softly to make sure he knows. He’s not the kind of person who just starts doing stuff, after all. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

“hmm.” His small, thoughtful noise skirts close to becoming a moan as his fingers glide between your bodies. “yeah, i was thinking along those lines.” He slides a leg over yours to pull you even closer, but his other knee positions itself so whatever’s going on with his pelvis doesn’t come into contact with your body. His bony thumb strokes over your eyebrow as he tilts your face, caresses the delicate skin of your upper lip with his nasal bone. He exhales when he feels your heart thud under his other hand, wedged against your chest.

“you’re so good to me,” he sighs as his sockets narrow passionately, voice low and calming but some kind of agitation evident in the still-quivering tension in his bones. “but more than that, you’re jus’... good. _love_ you. i’m gonna take care a you, make you feel it.” Distal phalanges run smoothly over the cotton of your worn shirt teasingly as his voice rumbles low and soothing. “can i look at your soul?”

There’s no room to sign, so you just nod fervently. His arm tightens to hold you even closer and you feel him shake inside, faint and deep. “okay,” he breathes gently, nuzzling you patiently before making a little space between your bodies. His fingers press and question, and you feel the answer resounding inside you. He takes his time, waiting until you feel like it might just jump out on its own if he doesn’t-oh, and then he does. The tiny bones of his fingertips break contact with your body, drawing forth your deep blue self as his breath gushes out in wonder.

“ohhh,” he coos deeply, and you can’t help but show him how that sound makes you feel. He pants a little, and you realize there’s amusement in it too even as he seethes with desire. “you trying to turn it around on me already? heh.” The points in his sockets expand and contract as he gazes into you, and his breathing steadies as his palm strokes down your neck, traces your spine down over your shirt, comes up under to stroke your hot skin underneath. He smiles softly as he watches what it does to you, bringing his hand out of your clothes now to touch your hair again before it gets more physical than that. You’re getting a better sense of how not to let that come through, but he certainly doesn’t seem like he needs more tension in him right now so it’s probably for the best.

“anything you don’t want to happen? i thought about touching you, but i’m-”

“ _Please_ touch me,” you interrupt faintly, and his sockets clamp shut for a moment as you feel his leg tense to twitch your body closer. You try and calm down a little, because you know your soul being out like this, so close and doing whatever it does can have a pretty strong effect on him. “I promise I’ll let you know if there’s anything I don’t want, okay?”

“okay, but...” he sighs, opens his sockets. The points are fuzzed out considerably, but he’s hesitating.

“you should know i’m coming in hot,” he adds quietly, then sees the incomprehension on your face.

“here,” he says and touches a distal phalanx to your lower lip lightly. There’s an intense tingle, like he might be sweating a little magic already, along with more of a drawing sensation than you’re used to. It’s a touch that pulls at something deeper than flesh, less tangible than bone. He runs his fingers down your arm, grazes your hand lightly. “might feel a little rough at first, little jolt maybe cause i’m excited. you wanna go together, ease it up?” You can even feel the increased sensation in your hand, although not as strong as you did on your lips. You close your eyes and really let yourself feel the way his whole body’s practically thrumming with it. It’s a different energy than when you’ve touched him, a bit like when you touch each other at the same time... but much stronger.

“No,” you hear yourself whisper, the presence of your own soul warming your already-heated face. You don’t even have to look into it to be honest with yourself, honest with him. “I want _you_ to do it.”

His exhalation is equal parts arousal and amusement. “i ever tell you what it does to me, how we like it the same sometimes?” Your eyelids flutter as the unyielding, individual bones of his palm cup your face before brushing your hair back, coming up behind to press your foreheads together tightly. His whole body makes tiny adjustments to hold you more firmly, your arm pressed to your side in the crook of his elbow as he twines your legs with his.

“makes me feel like i can give you what you want...like i know you,” he sighs lustily. “here, hold on to me tight, okay? yeah, right under there,” he encourages as you push your arm under him between his ribcage and pelvis, curl it around. Your other hand comes around to claim his hip. “little further back,” he suggests, and you spread your fingers to press against his sacrum. He gives a pleased little hum. “you ready?”

“Give it to me,” you whisper throatily.

His breath catches; trembles out heated over your face. “here it comes,” he says, pressing his forehead to yours. His limbs tighten around you all at once, and then _oh my god_.

“sh-sh-shh...” he soothes as you gasp and arch, your eyes flying open for a second as he’s suddenly _here_ , like he’s tossed you up out of yourself, then catches you and spins you around in his arms. Your lids flutter as something effervescent and captivating settles into you, familiar and strange at once. “that’s right. s’just me.” His soft reassurance deepens into a groan as this reminds you of the few times you’ve seen or felt him lose control; it’s not that reckless but the intensity of his presence in you is just as sudden, just as exciting. Or is it...excit _ed_?

You shiver deeply as all five of his fingertips skate out across the surface of your soul like an insect walking on the surface of a pond, but his limbs hold you steady as his labored breath evens out.

“yeah,” he rumbles softly, relaxing his hold as your limbs ease. “that’s it… that’s me. ’m real excited. you feel it?”

It’s hard to tell. It’s a _lot_ , you’re so full and fizzy and you want to, um, you want _something_ and you’re really, _really-_

“shh, shh,” he says again, stroking your face with his. “s’okay. that’s _me_.” Two points of contact leave, and you burble back up deliciously. “there’s you,” he breathes. “go ahead an show me.”

His excitement feels different than yours. It’s heady and giddy, like monster alcohol. Is that how he feels when he isn’t patient? When he’s giving in, not being careful? It’s so surprising when he gets like that; it calls out to something in your soul that you’re not used to hearing from, but it answers regardless.

 _The sound of shattering glass gets sucked right out of your ears, and you feel your back hit a mattress heavily. He puts his arms out above you, catching himself too so he doesn’t end up knocking all your teeth out with his collarbone or something. You’re hollering in surprise and impact and he’s roaring with laughter and it’s so stupid and fun and_ you’re safe __you’re safe__

“ohh, that’s… _that_ was...” he groans breathily, sending a tingling pang through you as the space between his sockets meets the bridge of your nose, almost locking against the shallow dip there. Two fingertips return, pushing in a little more than before. “you want me like that? it’s a lot, but i got more if you want it,” he pants, a faint clack shivering through him. “you gotta let me in, though. remember how we did before?” For some reason this feels different than other times he’s touched you, you’re not sure if it’s the lack of other touches and distractions, or maybe the lack of a physically grounding experience? All of his attention is on you, and what he has to give you. You feel him, and it’s like he almost… he wants _in_ , he wants to….

“s’okay if you can’t yet,” he says quietly, pulling his face away from yours. “i can’t go in easy right now, but i know what to do. ’m gonna help you get there.” You flutter your eyes open, and he’s peering at you dreamily. His face is so softened it’s almost slack except for the earnest, quivering points in his sockets. “feels good for me too,” he whispers softly. “you know it does.” The arm over your shoulder relaxes away, and his other hand comes in to cup around the deep blue of your essential self reverently.

“i’m jus’ gonna hold you.” The bones of his palms press together like closing blinds, and he curves his hands in towards you protectively. “hmmm,” he sighs as your eyes slip closed again, and you feel your limbs loosen like their strings are cut because all of a sudden _he’s got you_.

“that’s it,” he whispers. “i know i got you a lil tensed up.” His hands cup in again, press softly like you’re being touched everywhere at once, like you’re being wrapped up tight in a blanket fresh and hot with static. It’s so good and comforting, like nothing can get in, nothing can hurt you. The way he’s holding you, thumbs pressed against the rest of his fingers now and palms exerting gentle, even pressure shows you the difference between how he feels and how you feel.

The quivering resonance surrounds without penetrating; it’s supporting and massaging you gently. You lightly shudder out the last of your tension as it reminds you of how he’d drawn a dampening, soothing veil over your grief so long ago. You moan and pull his body a little closer; this time when his thumbs press you they sink in, tingling and coaxing. You tilt your face up and he caresses your cheeks with his teeth, breath huffing lightly out between them. “there you go,” he encourages, and you feel something ease even more, opening and yearning towards him. “you wanna feel it?” You taste anothersparkling burst of the excitement you know belongs to him, now.

 _Red and blue light plays across your cheekbones as your controlled shout rings over the music. Suddenly, he’s not alone._ “feel that?” he whispers hotly on your neck as your breathing gets a little more shallow. “i can give you a lot more when s’just me. you got me so worked up.” You think he’s humming into you a second, but that’s just how he’s touching your soul, the way he’s letting you feel him. You arch up a little and open your eyes, and you feel him responding to your movement.

“i gotcha,” he whispers, and you feel his arm wrap around sinuously underneath your shoulders, his body coming up over yours protectively. He’s looking at you intently, teeth parted slightly as one of his knees plants itself beside you on the couch cushion, and his socked foot hits the floor with a skitter-thump. You bring your arms up to hang loosely from his shoulders, and the back of your neck’s supported by the armrest of the couch as he bows his head, touches his forehead to yours. He’s breathing more heavily than before, and his body’s so tense. You wonder if it’s because the magic in his pelvis is still doing what it’s doing.

“dunno,” he defers gently. “might be. lemme know if you like this, okay? Here...” His arm tightens around you and lifts enough to tilt your head back, and he rubs his hard, smooth-and-textured face into your neck the way you like. You moan as a burst of hot anticipation fills you, something brittle like fear, and a sensation of sudden movement, triumph. It’s like the wind whipping high above Ebott, watching him look at something you can’t see.

Oh, you _like_ it. You want more. You make sure he knows you do, and you hear his slow, creaking exhale as he gives it to you; it’s something not everyone would like.

Something rushes toward you, the dodge is so close the wind of its passage whips tears from your eyes. Quick taste of pain that blends out like ink, rushes back in from the edges while transforming into joy; a biting shout of exultation.

Your heart gives another excited thud; this isn’t something you get to feel very often. It feels a little wrong, almost dangerous without actually being in danger... you feel so safe with him, you want him to know. Like being hugged on a carnival ride, warmth seeping in to cut a chilly breeze. He feels like laughter getting ripped out of your throat, your own voice missing your ears because you’re going so fast, you’re faster than your own voice, does he know this? Your breath comes shallow and quick, you can’t get enough.

He gives you an endless split second of weightless euphoria, braced for the impact… but it doesn’t come. It _never_ comes, and you don’t know if you’re falling up or down, into water or sky. You’re terrified; you’re _free_.

The heated, more-felt-than-audible growl he lets out against your neck makes you gasp, reminds you of when he tickled you in his bed that time, the slow, stupid wrestling that you _didn’t want to ever stop_ -

“y-you...ohh _hhh_. that’s...” he rasps against you. “god, you want _more_? you want me _in_ there?”

Your voice cracks in a plaintive moan, both fists you have tangled in his hoodie tugging at it aimlessly. It’s good; it’s fantastic and it feels like… him. You _feel_ him. And sometimes the thought’s almost as good as losing control, isn’t it? Like that time just him imagining it sent you both over the edge. His excitement has you reeling, your heart pounds without straining. You want more, you want _everything_ he has to give you.

“love you,” he groans, harsh and thick. “love that this feels good to you, but ‘m not gonna shove it all in.” His body moves to curve over you protectively, tension making his legs shake although there’s nothing nervous or unsure in his posture. “how bout jus a lil bit, but hard and quick? i think you’ll like it,” he pants, “it’s like-” a heated promise of surprise and sudden-soft pleasure rushes into you, making you buck and moan into him, desperate for what he’s offering.

“hold on to me,” he grunts, tightening his arm around your shoulders too. You manage to get your fists undone just enough to shove a hand under his clothes, and he quivers and gasps as your hot palm slides up his ribs in the back. His eye lights expand when your other hand brushes past his iliac crest, pushes against his sacrum carefully. His chest is only a few inches away from yours, and his arm’s bent at an odd angle to bring your soul and his fingers between them.

“you even know what you _do_ to me?” he cries softly, running his grin across your jaw, his chin nudging against your face as your arms try to pull him in toward you, savoring his trembling bones as he maintains the distance carefully. His tingling excitement pierces you even deeper, and your breathing gets shallow and rapid in time with his. You love him so much, he’s so beautiful. He feels so good against you, inside you like this. Does he know much you want this, want him?

He hums a wordless and shaky affirmative, and you feel his hard brow crease under a torrent of emotion and anticipation against yours. He pants his breath out once, twice, then in one smooth motion pulls you up against him sharply, shoving your soul back where it goes with a strange, choked cry from him, a gush of breath from you.

_Ohhhhhh._

His hand slips out from between and his arms slither around to crush you against him, his hard-slick ribcage flowing across your chest as you return his embrace in kind. Something like fireworks bloom shocking and bright inside you. His thin fingers fan out to support your head as it falls back in ecstasy, but it’s his breath that catches. His gratified moan mirrors yours as his resonating body grips yours deliciously, savoring your soul’s response to what he’s doing to you, what he’s already done.

It’s his magic; hot, soft and sudden, spreading out into you like blood in water after he’s already let go. It’s him at his most complex: a calm-surfaced, midnight ocean sparked through wildly with the phosphorescent points of pain and lust, balance craving its opposite. A knife edge of despair curls burning hot as it diffuses into a lazy, wicked roil of temptation; a crisp skin of control breaks under your teeth and you feel the chilling thrill of a faithless leap. He clutches you fiercely with a long, breathy groan and glides his ribs against you, his own soul reacting to what the magic he’s pushed inside does to yours.

Then he leans up with a baffled look on his face.

“did you come or anything just then?”

You pant up at him with wide eyes, shake your head wordlessly since that’s all you can manage at the moment. His eye lights flicker as he glances away for a second, but he doesn’t seem put off or anything. He looks back to meet your heady, lustful gaze. “you want to?” he whispers, and you nod fervently. “k. just, i might need to borrow some clothes later, and, uh, gimme a sec,” he rushes out, and your eyes widen even more when you realize it feels like someone poured a full cup of hot, fizzy water in your lap.

“yeah. i guess it’s gone,” he says a little faintly. “don’t really know why, but ‘m not gonna worry bout that right now. heh.”

He scrambles off you carefully, leans his hand against the armrest for balance as he tugs his shorts off and mops at his pelvis brusquely. He looks around for a second, then just shoves the shorts into his pocket (you manage a grin even as you pant for breath), doffs his hoodie to pile loosely on the floor and then kneels down in front of the couch on the floor.

You moan softly as his hands run up your legs, then gasp as they grip your hips to tug them forward. He buries his face in your middle, panting even more heat into your fevered skin through the fabric. He tilts his face up to look at you as he hooks his fingers into your waistband, and you lift your hips without being asked so he can pull your bottoms down and off. He stands again to lean over and shove your magic-soaked sweatpants into the same pocket as his shorts disappeared into, then kneels on the edge of the couch cushion to touch his teeth to your lips, warmed bone fingers cupping your cheeks gently.

“you...said you like my face, right?”

“I _love_ your face,” you groan desperately.

“you wanna fuck it?” he asks in a low, steady growl.

“Oh my god,” you grunt, bringing up your hands to hold his, eyelids fluttering.

“t-too much? is it weird?”

“Sans, please understand that I am so hot for whatever you’re about to try right now, you should really know it is _not_ gonna take much, okay? I’m pretty much _there_ ,” you implore, pressing his wrists lightly, taking one of his hands to rub at your chest again. You’re still practically exploding with his excitement; every word’s the truth.

“got it,” he whispers in awe, then slides down back to his knees on the floor with an audible thump. Without further ado, he pulls your hips forward a little more, and you holler embarrassingly loud as he grabs the sides of your ass, presses his teeth right into the sodden mess between your legs and plays it like a goddamn harmonica.

“Oh, _fuck!_ ” you wail, hands scrabbling down to helplessly grasp at his skull, and one of your feet lands on his shoulder for leverage. “Is, is that okay?” you pant, staring down at him, and you wail again when he _nods_.

“wow, you really like that, huh?” he groans, and _you feel that too_.

“This was a good idea,” you sob, squeezing your eyes shut as you hump his face a little recklessly. “I just, I just-” you cut yourself off with a tight groan, then change tactics because you really don’t want to get rough with him. You let your grip fall away, and your foot lifts up and slams past him into the coffee table instead, making him jump.

“Shit, sorry,” you gasp, and you wiggle forward even more, reaching up to grab the back of the couch for leverage. “You go ahead, okay?”

“i gotcha, just let me know if it’s good?”

“It’s _amazing_??” you grunt, bucking up against him a little. “It’s good when you talk, too.” Your face is so hot it feels like it might melt when you look down at him, the way the points in his sockets have expanded like gleaming coins. You hear a faintly repetitive rasping noise that sounds familiar, but your labored breath’s kind of drowning it out as he rubs the texture of his grin across your clit, unyielding and insistent. One of his arms has wrapped around the outside of your leg so his fingers can stroke your stomach lightly, questioningly.

“you need more? you want me to-”

“Nope,” you gasp. “Pretty sure this is gonna do it.”

“you look so fuckin good right now,” he groans, low and sincere. You can feel his breath huffing out over you from his nasal cavity, even through his tightly closed teeth a little. Rasp, click. A noise comes out of you that might be a slightly hysterical laugh because this looks so odd but feels so good, and like everything else that’s happened tonight it is a sweet surprise, and a wild ride. Like that thing he always says. _This has gone in a very unexpected direction._

He’s still groaning encouragement and praise into you with increasing volume and enthusiasm, and it resonates like his body does, it sounds the way his magic feels. “you’re drivin me crazy lookin like that... you hear the _sounds_ you’re making? ff _fuck_ ,” he hisses, and suddenly the insistent scrape of bone on bone you’re hearing slots into place.

“Are you touching yourself?” you sob, then suck your breath in and hold it so you can listen better.

“you bet your sweet ass i am, darlin.”

“I’m gonna come,” you whisper tightly.

“... _fuck_. come on me,” he growls, and “yeah...there you go, c’mon...”

Your climax arrives hard and fast, and the bones of his face have so satisfyingly _little_ give to them; it’s another utterly unique experience only he can offer, only he can share with you. And he just keeps on groaning into you, the voice generated somewhere inside his skull throbbing with encouragement and reverence, fierce desire and love...it’s indescribable the way it penetrates, exhilarating as roars right through you.

You realize dimly both his hands are on you now, gripping hard and pushing your legs up and apart; you can only see the top of his skull now. He keeps grinding down onto you mercilessly, the pointed bone above his nasal cavity digging in and scratching and you don’t particularly give a shit. Your breath explodes in a low, broken cry as the last spasms tear through you, and he eases you through them on his face, panting and whispering roughly into you the whole time until he finally feels your tension ease, even though you’re far from limp. Far from done.

Good lord, _you’re still excited._

He clambers back up onto the couch next to you half-naked, panting as you pull him in to kiss the taste of yourself off his teeth greedily. He moans heated and helpless, instantly melting toward your hands as your hot fingers find his bare bones, only managing to form words after a long moment.

“will you do me now? it’s gone, but i-” He moans again as you pull him against you quickly, turning to lean against the armrest with his back to your front, skull next to your neck. You tuck his head between your shoulder and cheek gently like he’s a violin you’re about to play, rucking up the front of his shirt to expose his ribcage, strumming your fingers across hard to hear him sing.

“oh my god,” he grunts desperately. He takes one of your hands to push your hot palm up against his spine, the other shoves surprisingly down right inside his pelvis to press his sacrum where he’s still soaked with spent magic. His hands come up to grip backwards into your shirt at the shoulders; your knees come between his from underneath, spreading his femurs up and out above your fleshy thighs. His weight feels satisfying on you, bones digging in evenly, not uncomfortably. You can hear him suck air in through his nasal cavity as you stroke his spine, push the heel of your hand down the inside curve of his tailbone. It tingles delightfully under your careful touch, savoring the moisture that isn’t, that doesn’t evaporate. He can’t arch up into you very well since you’re holding his legs apart, so he just shakes like a sheet in the wind as you caress him, gasping half-formed pleas.

“What is it?” you murmur, rubbing your soft cheek against his lolling skull. He arches his neck back; you can see his face in the corner of your eye and his sockets are almost shut, except for a rim of unfathomable darkness like negatives of new moons punctuating his iridescent, luminous face. “Tell me.” He shudders and tries to arch again, then sighs in surrender as he tightens his grip on your shoulders. His feet don’t touch the couch since his legs are tented up over yours, so he twines his ankles under your calves, letting you guide him.

“want you to use your fingers in me,” he whispers finally, and you feel his spine relax after a final shudder runs through it.

You hum agreement but keep your touch firm so you don’t tickle, remembering how this feels for him. He lets out a cracked moan as your fingertips gently circle two of the holes in his sacrum, and you grip his spine in your other hand to ground him in this touch, this moment. You feel a slow rush of private satisfaction as his body loosens on top of you, the residual tension draining out of him and replaced by small, purposeless movements. One of his hands comes free of your shirt, slides up as his arm hyperextends at his flexible shoulder to caress the back of your neck.

Your forked fingers slide up over the paired holes, then you use your palm again to rub down his tailbone firmly.

“Ohhh,” he whines, voice needy and weak. “that’s-” You do it again, and his body thrums on top of you, his limbs working softly without actually doing anything. “can you just...fuck me in there?”

“Are you sure?” you whisper, hoping he’s not too caught up in the moment. He’s never asked for this before, but maybe it’s the effects of everything you’ve done together lingering despite the fact that his soul’s stayed inside him this whole time.

“ _please_ fuck me,” he begs breathlessly, and the hand on the back of your neck slides away, draws down his own body. Clicks softly up and down against cervical vertebrae, clavicle and ribs. You wonder if he wants to bring his soul out, but he just keeps gently touching his bones, teasing the spaces. “real sweet an easy, like you….like you wanted to.”

You use your cupped hand to press downward on his spine while tilting your own hips up, letting him arch into your touch a little more. You circle one of the topmost holes again and feel him shiver before relaxing, then push your finger inside once he does. It barely fits because the integral magic’s so dense; his bones are wetter with shed magic in here too, hotter than outside.

His voice comes out smooth and pitched a little higher, loose fist exerting a steady pull on your shirt as his own finger slips between his ribs with a rasp. “that’s… real tight,” he hisses, and you see him curling two more phalanges into the same intercostal space with a sussurating chorus of bone on bone.

You love how his whole body feels when he gets like this, wrecked and loose under your ministrations. He caresses your ankle with his metatarsals lightly, moaning as he fingers the spaces between his ribs. You love the way you can see everything, hear the sounds he makes touching himself, his small, aimless movements as he pants exposed and open on top of you. The soft clacks of his pleasure run shivering down his midline as you remove your finger, rubbing his spine above and inside his pelvis with either palm.

“do it again?” He gasps as you use your two middle fingers to tease at the holes in his sacrum. “ _yeah_ ,” he sighs tightly, but the only tension in his body now are the fisted fingers in your shirt. He makes a soft noise almost like a cough as you push two fingers into him this time, and your own breathing roughens again when he pulls his phalanges out from between his ribs to clatter down his body to the front of his pubis.

After a moment of toying with it, he lets go of your shirt to replace the fingers between his ribs with his other hand, and you wrap your arm around him between his pelvis and ribcage to hold him in place. His plaintive humming surges in your ears as his palm clatters lightly and rapidly over the twin curves of his pubis, then his breath hisses back in when his middle distal phalanx slides up the center of his pubic symphysis with a tiny rasp.

“Holy shit, that’s hot,” you whisper shakily as a drop of shed magic hits the back of your hand.

“you like that?” His voice quivers through you, felt more than heard. “me too.” You can see how the shape of the tiny bone at the tip of his finger somehow manages to fit slightly into the joint there, despite how tightly packed the magic is. Almost as if-

“you got me loosened up,” he pants, shivering at the admission as you spread his legs apart even more. “i’m leakin out all over the place.” Now that you’ve got your arm around him, the increased leverage lets him push his hips forward, causing your fingers to rub the insides of the holes they’re pushed into. He makes the tiny coughing noise again, then gasps, “like that, do...do that-” His soft keen thrills you as you turn your face, press a hot kiss against his skull.

Magic patters down over your hand as you push into him, coaxed out by the hard fingertip sliding into the joint of his pubis. His phalanges withdraw from between his ribs, and he runs them over his sternum idly as you pleasure him, tilting his head so you can tongue his jawline eagerly. His hand roams lower, finds the forearm wrapped around his spine, caresses it gently back and forth with his hard, flexible palm as he sighs and quivers, hiccuping on his quiet delight as you try your fingers in a new set of holes. His fingers creep towards yours, and you allow him to loosen your grip, guide your hand back onto his spine, pressing upwards more and more until you feel the approach of the complex resonance inside his ribcage.

“that okay?” he asks quietly as he pauses his sliding fingertip, gripping his pubic bone with his hand instead while he applies barely-there pressure to your arm that merely suggests. “i-” he makes that vague swallowing noise again, “-i understand if i put ya off the idea.”

He sighs and relaxes as you kiss his jawline softly, groans as you pull your fingers out of him, grip his tailbone in your hand instead. “Would it feel good if I did that? Isn’t it too much?”

“nah, it’s a big space. feels good though,” he sighs out, voice throbbing with want. “i just...you can touch places i can’t,” he admits quietly, and you watch his arm get stopped by his ribs as he slides his hand inside himself. Oh. “don’t need it or anything, just want it. s’okay.” You can see where his arm can’t bend that way.

“Oh,” you say quietly, and rub his coccyx as he gasps appreciatively. “Like this, just up more?” you ask, rubbing the inside of his spine at the spot where you’d stopped, right before his ribs start.

“mmhmm,” he hums shakily. “if you don’t like it, just stop. s’okay,” he repeats, stroking the back of your hand soothingly.

You turn your head, lift his skull on your shoulder a little so you can kiss his jaw some more while you think about it. If there was ever a time he was ready for that sort of thing, it would be when he’s like this.

“Okay,” you breathe right into his acoustic meatus, and he goes limp, exhaling with anticipation. You slide your hand up his spine again, and keep going, fingers spread out a little to count his ribs as you go past them. You can feel the change in texture as you get past the point he can reach, and his slow, cracked moan tells you it’s a good spot to linger. You glance down, hearing the light rasping noises of his finger along his pubic symphysis resume as you press the pads of your fingers into bone that’s porous, almost rough. Your thumb brushes the inside of one of his ribs in the back, and his breath catches. “go ahead,” he pants out as you start to withdraw, “it’s-its good. it’s- _ohh_ ,” he moans as you rub the indentation right where that rib joins his spine. His magic patters out onto your hand again, and you rub his tailbone a little more, too.

Your arm can definitely be considered inside his ribcage now, and although you’d worried about it for some reason, he doesn’t have any trouble breathing or speaking. The resonance inside him here is more diffuse than inside his pelvis, actually, but it’s much more complex. Something about the way there are so many bones with their own curves and angles echoes against the narrow spaces between his ribs vertically, amplifies the way they encircle so much open space horizontally. The sensation of between-ness that his spaces hold is both magnified and multiplied in a way you can feel keenly, and his responses so far are both positive and mild enough to embolden you. You bask in his creaking, ecstatically tight exhale as you push your palm even further up his spine.

You turn your head to tongue his cervical vertebrae, and he lets out a faint, breathy moan as you use both your palms to rub up and down his spine firmly, one hand working at his sacrum, the other high up inside his ribcage, almost at his neck. The difference in texture is fascinating, and the ankles he’d had twined around your calves since you started go limp as magic pours out of the joint in his pubis, enough that it seeps around to lubricate the firm press of the heel of your hand down the inside curve of his tailbone.

“ _ohhhh,_ that’s it...” It’s a high, keening whisper, and you feel his fingers give your forearm a squeeze; even the elbow of the hand he’s using to touch himself gropes for contact with the arm you have shoved down inside his pelvis. Like he’s trying to hug you without stopping or interfering with what either of you are doing. You mumble half-formed words of encouragement into his neckbones, then run your open mouth up along his jaw to tongue at the sweet spot there, and he moans smooth and light.

“ _love_ that, love it _so much_ ….” he whisper-sobs faintly, and another flood gushes onto you under the slow, insistent rasping at his pubic symphysis. “ _...love you,_ ” he moans, then inhales deeply, shudders it out in a massive, creaking sigh as the flow of magic finally stops. A final bead of shed magic slides down the side of his face from his socket, and you flick out your tongue to catch it as you withdraw your hands from inside his body. He quivers in echoing delight as you turn to the side, moving both of you into a spooning position without letting go. You do notice there’s some pretty deep dents all down your front from his spinal processes, but you do not give even one tiny, insignificant fuck about that.

“holy shit,” he squeaks, sockets shut and brow creased in profound satisfaction as his arms fold in on top of yours, press in as his hands squeeze your wrists. He makes an odd, almost-throat clearing noise, takes a deep breath. “that was...that was too good,” he tries again. “heh….can’t even...” he clears his throat again, sounding a little closer to his usual deep register. “...can’t even talk normal...heh...”

You just lay with him, gently squeezing and stroking him, and he pushes back against you as the dazed look slowly melts from his features to be replaced with one of surprisingly deep contentment.

“Are you feeling okay?” you ask after a bit. Despite his current euphoria, tonight was still a bit of a roller coaster for both of you.

“i’d tease ya for askin me that… but i’m not gonna pretend i dunno know what you mean. and yeah, i really...” He exhales expressively, sounding just as profoundly satisfied as if he’d pushed magic into his soul, which makes you blink in surprise since he never even brought it out tonight. “stars, i really am,” he whispers, sockets ovaling lazily. “what about you?”

“Pretty fucking amazing,” you reply with a low, throaty laugh.

You content yourself with kissing the back of his skull for a minute or so, but you still have some fairly pressing questions. It feels like the excitement pushed into you by and with his magic is finally mellowing out, and you’ve calmed down considerably. You don’t know much about how sex goes for other monsters, but you’ve got a sneaking suspicion Sans might be pretty fucking skilled. It had felt like a lot at the time, but by now it’s obvious it had only been the tiny bit he’d said it would be.

At least his responses to what you do make you feel like you’re a match for him on that front, at least. You’re not sure how long you’d been touching his bones for, but you have a feeling it was probably a fairly extended session based on the depth of the dents in your front and the fact that you’re kind of thirsty. You don’t want to lean up yet to grab your water, though. Not quite yet.

“You don’t know why the, um. Whatever was going on with your magic went away? It melted, right?”

He just laughs softly. “guess so, yeah.”

“At some point we should probably talk about that some more,” you sigh.

“yeah,” he replies agreeably. “not now. but… you should know i’m a lot less freaked out by it now. i dunno. you made me feel like it's not...not a big deal. if it happens it happens.”

You just hum softly into his parietal bone, then give it a kiss. “I'm just glad I got to...um. I’m glad you liked the touching,” you giggle, then blush a little, putting your forehead to his skull as he laughs softly. You lean up, then realize you can’t quite reach your water glass without squishing him the same way you’d been squished before. Well, whatever. The pitfalls of the new, wider sofa are far outweighed by the benefits, and it's not like you can't cooperate to overcome them. You make a grabby motion with your outstretched arm, and he takes the hint, reaches out to get it and passes it back to you. You manage not to spill as you lean up on your hand, half-sitting to take a long, refreshing swig, then continue as you lean over him to set it back.

“I was a little worried trying out that stuff, because you...well, you didn’t take your soul out all night.”

He turns a little more on his back to look up at you with a pleasantly bemused expression. “jus’ as well. i mean, we already talked about me n my not-exactly-best-qualities, right? heh… second ‘m excited i get it out, then i’m touchin it, got you rubbin’ me all over the place…. next thing ya know i’m pushin everything i got.” He grins shamelessly under half-moon sockets.

“I don’t know, when it got a little dicey it might have calmed you down. Any special reason you didn’t want to?”

“same reason i usually don’t,” he smirks boldly, then sighs as his mood shifts. He’s seemed a lot more mercurial lately, and you’re not sure if it’s because you’re better at reading him or because he’s actually different. “gotta work in the morning.” Then he goes so still you feel your mouth get dry, but when he glances up at you, he has an oddly hopeful, vulnerable look on his face.

“you wanna come?”

“Huh?” you ask, narrowing your eyes at him. You _definitely_ already-

“to work with me,” he clarifies, chuckling heartily at your expression. “tomorrow.”

You just gape at him silently, and he rushes out, “s’just an idea, not like you have to-”

“Yeah!” you say, a little too loudly. “Sorry, I just didn’t realize that was ever even a remote possibility. I’m being weird about it, sorry,” you say, flushing a little.

“no, it’s okay,” he replies mildly. “was just thinkin about how much i’m gonna miss you, and i thought, well. you got the day off, and at this point...” he sighs, expression getting a little distant for a moment. “there’s not really too much ya don’t know bout it anyhow, and i’m getting real tired a tiptoeing around. been thinkin that’s why it got a little hairy with us for a while there… and i‘m having a hard time giving a shit about all the stuff i’m not supposed to say to you, to tell you the truth.” He sighs, then looks back at you, expression clearing.

“i’m ready to hit the hay, how bout you?”

You nod fervently.

“c’mere,” he replies with a grin.

He doesn’t even have a chance to hold out his arms before you’re already in them.

 


	32. to space in time

“gotta make a pit stop first, k? i’ll be back quick, and then we can head out.”

You blink over at Sans as he shoves his feet back into his slippers, taps the toes on the floor to get them all the way in like he does. He looks vague and distracted, leaning casually on the back of the couch.

“By yourself?”

He nods.

“Why?”

“said you didn’t ever wanna go back there, remember? but it’s the only place i can get our clothes clean. i’d just throw mine out, but...”

You nod slowly, then look down a bit deliberately at the floor. Even with that, you can still see him in your peripheral vision, so he walks into the kitchen, then elsewhere. Maybe you should have added that you don’t actually care if he throws out your magic-soaked sweatpants, but something in you still wants to hide how you feel about that place, and what you’d learned there. You don’t like thinking about just how fragile he is.

You don’t like thinking about how for some reason, you know that Papyrus is several hundred times more robust than his brother in comparison, even though you certainly don’t remember ever...checking.

Despite that, you find yourself doing just that until he walks back out of the kitchen five minutes later.

“you ready?” he asks, declining to comment on your facial expression, although by his he can tell pretty closely what was on your mind. He probably expected it, after all. You sigh, rise to your feet with a small groan that makes him frown.

“you up for this today? it’s okay if you’re not, we can always do this some other time.”

“No, I’m fine,” you reassure him with a smile. “I’ve got my meds if it gets any worse.” You indicate the pocket of the second monster outfit you’d purchased with the G you’d received from gyftmas months ago. This one’s a lot more casual, but shaped more or less the same as the one you’d worn to ARTBALL. The soft mauve tunic has pockets too; the trouser things are black, and the pockets are just as capacious and convenient as the other set.

He holds out his hand. You walk over to take it, shut your eyes.

When you open them, you’re in a rather fancily appointed kitchen.

“hey _alph_!” he hollers right away, letting go of your hand to shuffle over to the granite countertop, pull out a stepladder. “get your sweet ass down here!”

“This is where you work?” you comment, absolutely baffled.

Sans glances over with the confused look he gets specifically when he’s thinking about something else because he’s doing something he does all the time. Based on that, it’s safe to conclude that rummaging in a high cupboard, retrieving handfuls of individually-wrapped packages, and pocketing several bottles that look like the reused ones from his pockets filled with something murky and amber is a pretty common occurrence when he comes here.

“huh?” he says predictably, the point in his sockets coming back into focus after a second. “oh! nah, this’s al n undyne’s place. you never been here?”

You just raise your eyebrows and shake your head at him pointedly, then glance out the big bay window over the sink and see a vaguely familiar building, lightly screened by trees.

“Well, I’ve never been inside, actually,” you say as he kicks the stepstool noisily back into its niche, and continues stuffing his hoodie with treasures from Alphys’s cupboard.

“i brought you a surprise!” he hollers again with a grin, then winks at you as he finishes squirreling away his purloined goods.

“If th-this is another f-f-oh!” Alphys steps delicately around the corner wearing a lab coat with each button inserted into the buttonhole directly above the one it’s supposed to go in, rubbing one eye with a scaly, curved finger. She cuts off when she sees you in her kitchen, eyes widening as she blushes and puts a hand over her snout, nibbles a claw, then takes it out her mouth as she tries to address an unexpected guest. “Um, h-hello. I d-d-d-, um, d-d-”

You sigh heavily and turn to Sans, who has a shiteating grin on his face and seems just as content to watch Alphys stutter a hole into the floor.

“Sans didn’t tell me I was coming here, and I’m guessing he didn’t tell _you_ either?”

“N-no,” she exhales, narrowing her eyes at Sans, then turning to you with an expression equal parts relief and awkwardness. “W-well, you’re still welcome! But, um,” She blinks, switches to signing. “I don’t know if you had plans with Undyne, maybe? We have something we need to go do right now, so I think-”

“was thinkin we could take them with us this time, alphie,” Sans grins wickedly. “give em a tour, show em around the ol shithole. whaddaya say?”

“P-papyrus is going to get annoyed with you,” she replies with narrowed eyes, but he just shrugs.

“no reason to tell him, right? can’t get annoyed if he doesn’t know.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “I’m g-guessing Frisk d-doesn’t know, either,” she says aloud, and he shakes his head, one socket closed. Alphys adjusts her glasses on the bridge of her snout and rubs underneath delicately with a claw tip. She sighs heavily and looks over at you, then to your surprise walks over to Sans and takes the hand you hadn’t noticed him slipping out of his pocket. As you watch in bafflement, he pulls the other one out and extends it to you. You just stare at them.

“i’m the only way in,” he grins, shamelessly amused. “we just came here to pick up al.”

“T-that’s not technically true,” Alphys corrects absently, her quibbles over bringing you with them to wherever you’re going apparently dismissed. “It’s just a-almost impossible. S-s-speaking of which, when was the last time you c-checked the holding area?”

“dunno. monday or somethin.’

Sans wiggles his fingers at you playfully, grin is easy and casual.

“Holding area?” you say faintly.

“yup. s’where folks who try to get in there end up. i go in an clear em out every once in a while. it’s one a pap’s puzzles, so they’re not hurt or anything.” He looks even more amused as he watches whatever your face is doing. “nothin for em in there but spaghetti an a rubiks cube, though. never saw a human happier ta see me than the folks in there, gotta tell ya,” he adds, then breaks into a full on chuckle as he extends his bare phalanges again, rasping them against each other. “oh,” he adds as if he’s just remembering. “once we get there don’t turn around, and don’t wander off. unless you got the insatiable craving for spaghetti an rubiks cubes, i guess,” he finishes, sockets narrowing in lazy amusement.

You finally take his patient fingerbones into your hand and shut your eyes with a sigh. A familiar lurch, although it’s a little more intense this time; maybe it’s because Alphys is with you, too.

“Y-you’re losing your smooth t-t-touch,” she ribs casually as you open your eyes to a dimly lit corridor of some kind. The half-absorbed acoustics of her voice make you feel...not claustrophobic, but definitely like this might be somewhere either underground, or with extremely thick walls. You glance around, noticing that the dim light doesn’t actually seem to be coming from anywhere, so it must be magic-based.

Sans shrugs, but his hands stay out of his pockets this time. “eh. it’s kinda far, an I haven’t had ta bring anyone else but you here in…..dunno. maybe since paps?”

“So Papyrus is like a….security specialist?” you ask hesitantly as the two short monsters in front of you start to walk toward a door at the end of the corridor. It’s all very plain, tiled rather than carpeted, and you take Sans’s advice not to look behind you since you’re pretty sure he wasn’t pulling your leg about the potential danger of pasta and puzzles.

“paps is why anyone who doesn’t belong underground, doesn’t _get_ underground,” he answers simply enough. “or in here, i guess. same way he useta make sure folks that didn’t belong in snowdin couldn’t leave the path.”

He pulls open the door, and you follow Alphys in after him.

Wow. You can really tell who works here. There are a few desks shoved up against the walls and in the corners of the room, and anime posters and scrolls adorn most of the walls. There are a few bits of recycled cloth-paper tacked up that look like mathematical formulas and designs for objects you’ve never seen before. Every flat surface is stacked high with dirty dishes, more bits of paper, mugs and teapots, unrecognizable objects, and oddly enough, toy figurines. A value-size bag of dog food is leaned up against one wall, and there are machines whose purpose you can’t even begin to imagine under desks, a tall one with blinking lights in the only non-desk corner, and a low boxy one in the middle of the room.

“careful touchin stuff,” Sans warns, but he’s grinning as he watches you get a load of his workspace. “some a these piles are live. Why don’t you hang out over there while I give ya the tour?” He indicates a small couch that reminds you of the one in your office at work, except this one has one cushion on the end buried in a pile much like the ones on the desks and tables. You think that might be a microscope sticking out the top, but you wouldn’t be willing to take that bet. You eyeball the space closely to gauge if you’d be able to lie down on it...then realize the free space is exactly the same height as both grubby scientists in here with you. You sigh and shake your head, can’t help the indulgent smile from spreading across your face as you take a seat on the available end of the couch.

Alphys walks over to a desk against the left wall, and you notice that underneath and behind the impressively cluttered desktop is what you think is the kind of computer you remember seeing images of; a big plastic box, with other attendant boxes that make it run. She pulls out a kind of sliding ledge from underneath, and there’s a flat plastic sheet with oddly-shaped buttons all over it. It’s a keyboard; the template and precursor for the touch-matrices you use in your computer, phone, and viewer, but nothing you’ve seen in person before.

Sans is gazing curiously at you as he shuffles forward, although he stops at the low, boxy machine in the middle of the floor. Oh, and he’s been rolling a backless stool behind him, too.

“what’s so interesting over there?”

“I haven’t ever seen one of those before,” you point out, and a crease appears between his sockets.

“computers? humans have those. fact, most a those fell down from the surface in the first place. we jus fixed em up.”

You hear Alphys snicker quietly, then pointedly summon your viewer and brandish it at him. “ours haven’t looked like that in at least 80 years,” you comment dryly, but he just shrugs and sits on his stool, hits a switch underneath to bring it down even further.

On second thought, it makes you think about how computers used at the highest levels of government, including the military and space stations, often use computing equipment that might be considered decades out of date by civilian standards, and they often have good reasons for doing so. As far as you know, this is the highest level of monster government and technology, so you suppose there’s a kind of symmetry to it. And if these two were the ones messing with the tech in here, who even fucking knows what it’s capable of. Probably shit you can’t even imagine.

“welp, s’what we use. me n al fixed em up, do exactly what we need em to.” you dismiss your viewer again as you lean forward.

“so usually when I get here i make a few a these,” he begins, and pulls his hand out of his pocket to show you something small and metallic. It honestly looks like a miniature chunk of monochromatic bismuth, or an electric circuit of some kind. He glances surreptitiously at Alphys’s back, then looks a little sheepish as his eye lights come back to you. “it’s uh, the thing in monster phones that make it work. mine’s a little more, uh. intense than most of em, if ya catch my drift.” he winks. “these are just regular ones. still takes it outta me though, so ‘m only doing one today.”

You watch him position two fingers oddly over the little bit of metal, like he’s miming someone walking without moving them. His stare intensifies, and then the point in his left socket disappears, replaced by a green ring of light. You can’t help it, it looks so odd you still jump and make a little noise. It doesn’t break his concentration, but you see Alphys glance at you in your peripheral vision before turning back to her clacking and grunting.

After only a few mathematically precise passes over the tiny bit of metal, Sans drops his hand and tosses the tiny bit up into the air. You hear a small click as he catches it, then puts it into what you’re realizing is actually just a box in the middle of the floor.

“five for the month,” he mutters, and Alphys mumbles “o-okay,” absently.

Sans leans over bent almost double to lean his elbows on his knees, and his face in his hands. He gives you a soft smile, tilts his head. “that was the exciting part,” he grins fondly. “now the part i didn’t tell ya about to make sure you’d come, where i go and sit over there for three hours.” He indicates the desk next to Alphys’s, just as cluttered and furnished with its own boxy computer.

Alphys turns to grin over her shoulder at you, and you smile back.

“I’m s-sure they have r-r-reading to catch up on, too,” Alphys comments, and Sans just shrugs and flops his slippered feet down rhythmically to wheel-walk himself over to the desk without getting up.

You summon your viewer, start going through some of your work messages, adjusting and fine tuning some of your appointments and scheduling. You take out your phone, remove the thin sheet from its casing to merge onto the viewer and set the button to sync; you let the two devices work out the conflicts for you while you open up a few journal articles for perusal. You hear Sans and Alphys mutter at each other while you recline on the couch, and you notice after a bit they fall into a certain rhythm.

“it needs to go in for checks. that’s... yep.”

“D-d-don’t leave it in the space.”

You hear clacking and clicking of claws and phalanges on the strangely hollow-sounding plastic keyboards, and at one point you look up as Sans digs his fingerbones loudly into a cartoon-adorned bowl already on one side of his desk, shoves something from it between his teeth. Oh, he’s eating. You narrow your eyes as you hear a crunching noise, which is very odd considering he almost never makes a sound when he eats. He doesn’t normally chew, after all. You rub your hand across your mouth when you realize he’s crushing tiny, round brown-and-pale-orange bits between his front teeth, then tilting his head back so it all (mostly) falls into the gap between them. You glance over with raised eyebrows at the enormous bag of dog food against the wall. Wowsers.

Sans leans in to peer at something on the screen, which his skull almost completely blocks from your view. As far as you can tell it’s all just cells with numbers in them in white and green on a dark background.

“you sure you wanna leave it in here?”

“I think it’s f-f-fine.”

“runnin a little hot but it’s in parameters, i guess.”

After an extended silence, you glance up and see that not only does Sans fall into sign from time to time (you notice you don’t understand it, and it might be because he’s not talking to you), Alphys gestures back at him occasionally in the same language. The idea that he must have taught her it at some point, maybe because she has a speech impediment too, makes your soul go all soft and melty inside.

A smile steals across your face as you watch them reach for things around each other, grab stuff off each other’s desks, and mutter half-finished sentences aloud and in gestures to full effect. At least twice you see each of them hand something over silently the second the other straightens to look around for it. Even Alphys seems to be constantly in tune with where Sans is and what he’s doing, without any particular advantage in the same spatial sense that he has. It’s just long acquaintance and a lot of time spent together in a soothingly comfortable, grubby atmosphere. It suits you just fine too, and another hour and a half goes by before you even notice.

“I need you for c-checks, Sans.”

“aww, come on. it’s good.”

“I know. B-but you still have to d-d-do it,” she stutters flatly.

He sighs like she asked him to climb Mount Ebott, hops down from the stool and trudges over to the chair in front of another odd, boxy computer.

“ahhh, fuckin... _okay_ , al. _your_ turn next time, though.”

He just shoves the pile of stuff off onto the floor without looking; you’re pretty sure you heard a dirty dish break in there somewhere, muffled by discarded clothing, books, and papers. He sits defeatedly, and now they both have their backs to you completely.

“That b-b-better not have been my M-mewmew bowl. I only have f-four left, _butterfingers_.”

“never gonna let me live that one down, are ya, al?”

“That d-depends,” she says in a half-sleepwalking tone, the clacking of the oddly-shaped keys failing to drown out her stuttering but clear voice in the otherwise silent room. “Are you ever going to t-tell me what they d-d- _did_ to you that had you d-d-ropping my bowls in the s-sink?”

Oh my god. Is she talking about...

“offer still stands. checks is on you for a month and i’ll kiss n tell,” he drones back absently.

“K-kiss my _cloaca,_ h-h-handy Sans.”

“back on that, huh?” you hear him chuckle evilly. “didn’t hear you complainin’.

Your mouth falls open silently. Okay, yeah. You are now 100% sure they’ve both completely forgotten you’re here. Handy Sans? What the fuck does-

“Handsy Sansy, D-d-dogfucker of Snowdin,” she snickers in an amiable singsong. “g-got his fingers in everybody’s p-p-pie.”

His shoulders shake with heedless, distracted laughter.

“yeah, well the only thing to fuck in snowdin’s dogs an snow, and not everyone likes it like pervy al, shovin’ ice cubes up her-”

He cuts off and they both snap their heads around in shock when you can’t hold in the strangled noise tearing out of your throat any longer. “hey alphie,” Sans says in a mild tone belied by the iridescent tint on his zygomatic arches. “you remember what we were just talkin bout?” Alphys, purple, shakes her head.

You collapse your face into your folded arms and laugh until tears start pouring out of you eyes. “Serves you right-” you cut yourself of with another breathless guffaw, “-for forgetting I’m here!” you finally manage to wail out hysterically. Handsy Sansy? _Pervy Al_? You have no idea how much if any of that was true, but if that’s the way they entertain each other when they’re faced with tedious tasks at work….holy shit. It shouldn’t be a surprise they’d fallen into it the second their backs were turned if they’ve been doing this as long as it seems like they have, but my god. That’s one (or more?) ways to find something to get your mind off work. Holy _shit._

You wipe tears from your eyes in time for them to sigh and shrug at each other, seeming pretty sheepish. God, do they really not pay any attention at all to what they're saying when they’re in here? How many years… decades…? have they been working alone in this hole? The thought sobers you a little, but it’s not depressing, exactly. Just...you’re glad they have each other, at least.

“Do you guys want me to come around over there so you don’t forget again?”

“nah,” sans replies, and if you didn’t know him so well, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell he’s still a little embarrassed. “wanna put on some music?”

“Sure,” you say warmly. “What are you in the mood for?”

“whatever you…” He trails off, and you hear clicking as he leans forward. “alphie, what’s… oh _shit,_ ” he hisses.

Sans staggers to his feet, rasps your name in a piercing tone you haven’t heard since the day you met him as his stool clatters over.

u s e t h e k e y.

_n o w._

The blood drains from your face as you lurch up and stumble to the nearest door: the one you’d entered this room from. He’s already unraveling in the corner of your eye as you slap your hand to your chest, then _pull_. The key appears instantly and you slam it into the door, screw your eyes shut and _turn it_ as you feel something massive and hot pushing at your back, and-

 

 

-you stumble through the door, eyes still shut until you see that there’s some kind of light in here, shining redly through your closed lids. You hyperventilate, stagger sideways until you feel cold tile under your fingers. You hear the door close with a light thump behind you, and finally crack your lids to see where the hell you’ve ended up.

It’s some kind of low, long room, tiled floor, walls, and ceiling in blue and white like a lab, or a...workshop? There aren’t any windows, and some blueprints are tacked lackadaisically on one of the long walls, not very far up. A massive, sheet-draped shape takes up one corner, and drawers with sleek, brushed-steel hardware line the space beneath a counter along one wall. Otherwise it’s unfurnished and empty, which is unsettling despite the sterile atmosphere. Maybe because it’s hard to think of a room belonging to Sans that doesn’t have any place to rest. Is this really someplace of his? There’s not even anything to sit down on except the hard, tiled floor.

You don’t, because you’re too worried. So instead you find yourself pacing back and forth, counting the steps it takes you to touch one far wall, and then the other.

Turns out your phone doesn’t work in here.

After a terrible, unknowably long amount of time you feel air displaced behind you, spin around and there he is, looking exhausted but alive. You exhale shakily.

“What happened?” you ask before he has a chance to say anything. “Are you okay?”

He pulls his hands out of his pockets to rasp over his face, and you see a plaster ‘bandage’ like the one he’d shown you on his cracked metatarsal a while back, this time on his pinky phalanx. You really try to give him a second, but you feel your fingernails digging into the insides of your wrists where you wring your hands in front of your chest, and you step toward him hesitantly.

“You’re hurt. Where’s Alphys? Is-”

“she’s fine,” he grunts, then walks forward and grabs you around the waist, leans his frontal bone into your chest and exhales vehemently out of his nasal cavity. You can hear it hiss through his teeth, too. There’s a barely-audible whistling sound sometimes when he does that forcefully enough, and it usually isn’t a good sign.

“Are you in pain?” you ask in a small voice.

“not really,” he drones. “jus’ real tired. gonna have to hang out here for a lil bit, k? m’ not gonna sleep, but i gotta rest.

“What _is_ this place?”

“basement,” he replies quietly. “we’re under our old place in snowdin. under… the underground, i guess. heh.” He doesn’t look very happy about it. He shuffles across to the far side of the room with dejected familiarity, like he’s worn every possible path here into the floor. He turns around and thumps against the wall, slides to the floor in a practiced motion. You join him, take his hand to let him help steady you as you sit cross-legged in front of him.

“What happened?” you try again.

He leans his skull back against the wall, eye lights tipping down to meet your gaze.

“it was bad,” he states plainly after a minute. “long story short… somethin exploded. i had to get it outta there, but i gotta touch it to make that happen.” He holds up his bandaged finger, and your mouth falls open.

“i threw it into space,” he adds before you even have a chance to formulate a response to the fact that-

“You…. wait. You touched an _explosion_?”

He nods.

“And you took a shortcut...into space?”

He nods again. “just barely, but yeah. and it wouldn’t a worked if it wasn’t magic. like i said before, s’all one piece. even explosions. heh….”

There’s no humor in his voice. He looks tired.

“You look tired,” you whisper, more than a little horrified.

“yup. closest safe place for it’s bout 70 miles straight up, lotta the time,” he adds, and closes his sockets for a long moment before opening them again.

“used ta think about space a lot when we were all trapped underground. gotta be honest...it actually kinda sucks.” He pulls his legs up so they’re tented in front of him, wraps his arms around them. Leans forward and rests his chin on his knees, and just hunches inward until he looks smaller than he actually is, as if even his body’s magic is depleted.

“that shit’s dangerous,” he adds. “made me think about what you said a while ago. bout how maybe we’ll just die for no reason, or some other reason.”

You frown at him for a second, then reach a conclusion.

“How long would it take us to get out of here without a shortcut?”

A crease appears between his sockets. “bout six hours, prob’ly.”

“I think you should eat and take a nap. You’ve got that bad vibe you get when you’re not okay.”

The points in his sockets flicker at you. “huh?”

“You get a vibe when you’re not okay,” you repeat, “it’s like cold without being cold, and you start saying weird stuff.”

“You gonna be okay sitting in here for an hour or so, though?” he says instead of addressing that, rubbing his forehead with the thumb of his injured hand. He doesn't look at you, so you’re pretty sure he thinks you’re right. “there’s really nothin upstairs anymore; most a the places right around here are empty. even the bar’s closed, like i was sayin’. not cold like it used at be, but still warmer down here.” His fingers slide over his sockets as he closes them.

“Just eat and rest, Sans,” you chide gently. He sighs and removes his hand, opens his sockets to glance at you surreptitiously. Then he pulls two hot dogs and a bottle of ketchup out of his pockets, nodding a little. He tears his apart to stuff it between his teeth like he usually does, while you turn your back to the wall so you’re parallel to him and extend your legs out as he hands you the other one. One of the bottles from Alphys’s cupboard appears while you eat your ‘dog; he sets the bottle to his teeth, drains it. “spider cider,” he explains absently as he pockets the empty. You’re quiet while he finishes, then tips the bottle of ketchup between his teeth too before the remains disappear back into his pocket, along with his hands.

“’m not gonna sleep,” he says finally. “i don’t like it here.”

“This is your place?”

He nods wordlessly.

“Your stuff?”

“yup.”

You tilt your head towards the sheet-covered form. “what’s that thing?”

“it’s broken,” he sighs enigmatically. “you wanna see?”

You nod.

He’s close enough to reach out and pull the sheet off of a hulking monstrosity of steel and wires, tubes and vents without standing.

“What...what _is_ this?”

“dunno,” he replies in a deceptively casual tone. “it’s broken,” he repeats. “every once in a while I come down here, try an fix it? maybe just mess with it? but i...i don’t know what’s in there,” he whispers softly, as if to himself.

“well, that’s-” you cut yourself off and stare at him, eyes widening in alarm. He doesn’t meet your gaze but his eye lights harden.

“yup,” he answers your unasked question. “that’s not even the weirdest thing though. sometimes i get in there, right up in the guts and crack open somethin i _know_ i’ve never seen before. all sealed up, rusted shut for years in some cases. then i’ll find somethin like...”

He trails off, rummaging in his pocket. His hand appears with something small and wadded up in it, and he hands it to you. It’s that cross between cloth and paper like what monsters use, folded small and so worn it feels like it’s turning into a solid piece. You finally manage to pry it open. There’s writing on it.

_just give up. i did._

“Sans...”

“’s my handwriting. not forged, either. i can tell the difference.” His eyes roam the hulk of metal with the ease of long practice, the same way he looks at his own hands. “i _did_ , ya know. haven’t touched it in years. that one’s not why, though.”

His face slowly goes blank. “i wanna show you, but... it’s pretty upsetting.”

You think about it, then nod when he glances at you. He rolls his hips, shifts until he’s kneeling in front of you. He rummages in his pocket again, this time his hand emerges fisted around something small. His other hand comes out to take yours, and it’s shaking. He takes a deep breath as he turns your palm up, exhales slowly until the shaking stills a bit.

He puts a small, wrapped piece of red cloth into your palm, then distal phalanges tease it open to reveal a small pile of silvery powder. He grunts unpleasantly when he sees it, then quickly wraps it back up taking a great deal of care not to touch it, and to make sure you don’t touch it either. His hand shakes even harder as he finally shoves it back into his pocket.

You open your arms in time for him to fall against you, crawling into your lap just as his breath explodes into a dry, bitter sob.

“What _was_ that?” you ask in a horrified whisper.

“it’s papyrus,” he chokes out, tightening his arms around you.

“Oh shit,” you gasp breathlessly, rubbing his back with one hand and pushing his skull against your shoulder with the other. “Shit, Sans, oh _shit_...”

It hadn’t been much to see; just a tiny pinch of powder in a red piece of cloth. His favorite shade of red. His _dust_. Holy fucking _hell_.

“why’d i put somethin like that in there?” he cries, throatless voice cracked and broken. “the _fuck_ is wrong with me?”

Your throat gets tight as you consider what he’s saying. His brother’s alive, and as far as you know, waiting for you both to come home as soon as Sans has rested enough. He means some _other_ him; maybe even one that happened, or is still happening.

“sometimes i wonder how many sanses are in there right now,” he whispers hollowly, possibly confirming your train of thought. “i’m in there right now fixing it, and breakin it too, i bet.”

He isn’t crying. Might be better if he was.

“hiding shit in there, tryin ta _hold on_ ta somethin for a change,” he rasps bitterly. “not me, though,” he continues, squeezing you tight.

“i know better.”

He’s lying.

You hold each other for a little while that slowly becomes a long one, both of you shifting bit by bit until your legs are tented up in front of you with him between them, leaning against your chest facing the machine in the corner. His skull rests against your face as you lean back against the wall, your arms around him propped up on your tented knees. He’s got one bare hand out, stroking your forearm where he’s pushed up your cardigan. His smooth bones are cold.

“you know why i love you?” he murmurs after a long time. His voice makes your soul twinge strangely.

“Why?” you ask, even though you’re not sure you’ll enjoy hearing the answer when he’s like this.

“cause you really don’t give a shit about that thing, do ya.”

“Not really,” you reply softly after a while. “Well. I care that it upsets you, and I understand why it does. But...I guess I don’t understand what you mean?” You give him a light squeeze.

He exhales slowly, pulls up the grey hood of his blue sweatshirt before leaning back into you gently. He’d finally lost the other star charm, crumbled apart from his relentless fiddling and tugging, and you’ve been meaning to buy him a new set.

“means, like...dunno. ‘s hard to explain.” He strokes your arm some more while he thinks about it. You suppose this is the closest he’s willing to do to resting in this awful room.

“you’d rather be at grillby’s with me, right? or my place, eating whatever paps made. at your place, safe in bed watching stuff. touchin each other.”

“Um...yeah, I really would?” you can hear the disbelieving amusement in your voice.

“you don’t chase after the bad shit,” he says slowly. “and you don’t...the bad stuff doesn’t make the good things better for you. the good things are enough. sure, sometimes you get the bit in your teeth, start askin questions you don’t wanna know the answers to when you’re scared, but...otherwise. you know what’s important, and it sure as hell isn’t _this_. just being alive’s enough of a thrill. s’why you liked...” he makes a small noise, and there’s actual amusement, maybe even a hint of joy in it as his fingers slow on your arm, become a caress. “las’ night. that’s what makes me feel good; jumping into the ocean, you taking me out on the town like yer showin me off or somethin’. sparring with paps, even if i get a lil hurt. first time i saw the stars.”

He leans away slightly to turn his broad, monstrous face toward you. The points in his endlessly dark sockets focus, expanding slightly as they take in your features, meet your eyes. You reach up to touch his maxilla gently, then lean in to press your lips lightly to his orbital bone. You wrap your arms around him again, and he leans back into you with a less exhausted sigh, shifting a little lower down and leaning back into you like a soft human chair, although you push his skull aside a little so it’s not blocking your face. You give him a hard time occasionally, but you honestly like the way he uses you like a piece of furniture. His shorts are just long enough that they don’t slide down his smooth femurs when he tents his legs up like yours, and it’s one of the ways his priorities about clothing remind you of your own, most of the time.

“You know why I love you?” you ask after a little bit.

“cause i’m slow at walkin’ and good at fuckin,” he answers promptly, and you squeeze him, muffle a snort in his hood because he always gives you an out. He never pushes you into reciprocation, always leaves room for you to wriggle away, hide your feelings. But not this time, you don’t think.

“Exactly,” you smile, even though he can’t see it. “I want you to know, I wouldn’t go back to the way it was before. I never told you that, did I?” He goes very still. “You know my life hasn't been easy,” you continue quietly, both of you staring at the awful machine in this depressing, tomblike basement; the graveyard of a self he can’t remember.

“You know I don’t like it talk about it, either. And you never push, but you know that I...can relate. To you, and what you want out of life. To have things be okay, for everything to work the way it’s supposed to, and just...be with the people you love.” You exhale as evenly as your can, give him another squeeze for your own comfort this time.

“Have I ever told you how much I love that you don’t have to have some kind of context for me, to just...be with me? Like this?” You press your eyelid against his hood, notice a damp spot when you lean back up. He shakes his head silently, because he probably doesn’t even know what you mean, really. And you love him for it. Love that he makes you feel less _other_ , less monstrous, more like a person.

You blink. “You said you looked up my papers, right?”

“yup,” he answers quietly.

You remind him of the one in the sociological journal you’ve got in mind, and he turns his head to look at you, nods slowly. He might be a monster, but he’s still his own version of an academic. Another thing you can meet in the middle with him on.

“You don’t stress me out,” you say, soft and emphatic. “I’m not constantly wondering how to fight or counteract whatever preconceived notions you have about _someone like me_ , who goes into all these categories that you don’t have and don’t care about,” you add slowly, trying to show how important it is to you on your face. “You don’t love me for the novelty, or weird guilt, or because I’ve suffered; I don’t love you because you’re a mess, or I’m enamored by trauma, or because I think you’re dangerous.”

He gives another almost imperceptible nod. “And it might be arrogant to say so,” you continue a little wryly, “but you love me the way I _want_ to be loved, for the reasons I think I _should_ be,” you say, frowning. You really can’t think of a better way to put it, but he’s just smiling at you gently over his slightly hunched, sweater-softened shoulder.

“nothin wrong with having standards,” he replies mildly. “i’m into it. glad i meet em, i guess,” he adds quickly, and you see the faint iridescence of his magic considering becoming not-part of him rise into his face. You never get tired of the way he gets so worked up from being complimented, or maybe it's just the way you compliment him. You make a silent promise for later that makes you smile to yourself a little wickedly, then sigh as you prompt him to turn around so you can kiss him some more.

He leans back on the inside of your leg a little, trying to keep the strain off your hips. Not that it matters that much, the dank basement’s already seeping into your bones. But the pain and stiffness doesn’t dampen your desire to bring your fingertips under and inside his chin, tilting his face up as you lean in. You press your mouth to his zygomatic arch, just under the deep groove below his eye socket. Part your lips so you can taste how smooth he is there; duck down to taste the slick-polished bone of his chin as well.

Craving more of the same, you press lips and tongue to his fixed grin, smooth as glass and a little warmer than his face. His arm creeps around your waist as he exhales slowly, then your heart gives a thud as he hesitantly parts his teeth, allowing you to use your tongue to test their edges. Your arm tightens around his shoulders and his head tilts back compliantly, your other hand coming up to creep inside his hood and caress his maxilla, his chin, the ridge that overlaps his teeth and gives his smile so much expressiveness.

He inhales unevenly as you push your tongue between his teeth on one side, curling it a little until you can feel that they’re a little less smooth in the back. You try it on the right side where the gap’s narrower, and he moves slightly, catches your lower lip and just holds it gently between his teeth for a moment. His teeth are so _sharp_ ; he's so careful and loving you feel your exhalation tighten into a subvocal whine, and your eyes prickle.

When he releases your lip you reach down for his hand, very carefully since it’s his injured one, and press it to your chest as you dip your tongue delicately between his teeth again. You want him to feel your heart pound as he finds yet another way to offer himself to you, to feel the winding tapestry of your soul pierced through with absolute and certain tenderness as he does his best to invent a way to kiss you back. You run your tongue along his grin, press your lips and pull back just enough to whisper his name, how much you love him. “love you too,” he replies quietly, holding your upper lip between his teeth this time, letting it go to bite at the lower one a little more firmly. A tear rolls down your nose, falls into his eye socket.

And that’s what finally breaks the mood a little, him snapping the socket shut with a surprised noise, your giggling response and apology.

“that feels so weird,” he chuckles, sounding almost heartened by it, clicking the non-plastered phalanges of that hand over his closed socket rapidly. “y’know I can taste it?”

“Seriously?” you blink at him, more surprised than perhaps you should be. “Why?”

“dunno,” he grins back. “’s not fair. you know how much easier my life’d be if I could _eat_ that way?”

“Okay, now I’m not going to be able to get the image out of my head of you double-fisting ketchup bottles into your eyes for the rest of my life.”

He has a hearty laugh about that, then hugs you tight, leans back and sighs. Gets to his feet and extends a hand down to help you up.

“wanna go back ta my place, or am i being presumptuous?” he asks, waggling the tops of his sockets like eyebrows. He looks like he feels a lot better, like with a little more rest and maybe some cuddles he’ll be right as rain, ready and willing to do the work of healing himself yet again.

“Well, that depends. Are you offering to get _handsy_ , Sansy?” you reply with an evil grin.

The expression on his suddenly iridescent face reminds you why every trouble and conflict you’ve overcome so far, as well as every hardship you have yet to face together will be more than worth it.


	33. no time like the present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> uh oh

Sans _loves_ it here.

He’s staring into the sun because he can, and because it’s pretty to him. Still a novelty, even. He feels the primary dimension of his eyes changing their focus as a scudding group of clouds cover it briefly, no more than a few seconds before the ball of radiation and incandescence in the sky reappears, sinking its warmth into his bones deliciously. For a moment he feels an impulse to shrug off his hoodie so it can penetrate along his arms, too, but that’d require moving, pulling, even _sitting up_ , maybe.

Nope. Not in the mood, because this is already perfect.

The ocean’s seething and crashing about thirty feet away and about the same distance down; he knows where every little crab and anemone and octopus is hiding in the cracks and crevices underwater. That’s part of why he watches so many nature documentaries, did you know that? He likes thinking about where all the animals are, their names and their habits and hobbies. Where their bones are, sometimes. It’s not the kind of thing he ever talks about with anyone, he just likes to feel the tertiary dimension of his eyes following their darting, their shambling, their clicking and clacking. Minding their own business. All those little legs.

That’s the kind of thing he likes to think about when he’s here.

It’s okay if you tell him again. It’s probably just a matter of time until you do, and it’s okay. He wants you to know it’s fine.

Part of why he loves it is because no one but him ever comes here, at least...not as far as he knows. Which is a good thing, since his shorts are half-off and he can feel the breeze from out over the water coming in where his bones are bare. It’s blowing over and through his pelvis everywhere except the deliciously heated, wet spot at the front where you have his lower body pulled up into your lap, stance widely kneeling as you idly take your pleasure there, easy and sweet. Your hand feels good holding his ilium, a nice firm grip as you pull him up a little more. His soft, satisfied moan gets carried away by the pleasantly cool breeze, and even the bare legbones he has hooked around your waist so you’re not pulling all his weight (not quite, heh) are feeling almost as loose and lazy as the rest of him.

You like it, and he moans again as you give him another exquisite wave of how beautiful his bones look in the sunlight, his arms tossed over his head with careless abandon on the sun-warmed blanket you’d spread out there for you both to lounge on. Especially the tiny peek of the white underside of his humerus between the sleeve of his t-shirt and an interior fold of his sweatshirt, the cotton inside a little pilled, worn dark blue playing off and enhancing the blue-yellow iridescence that plays across the lustrous ivory surface from time to time.

It’s something that makes his bones whiter than white, like a painting that tricks your eye into believing it sees white. The way his body works is like a masterpiece constantly at work creating itself, colors dancing just under the surface, breaching it like the dolphins you could see in the watery distance sometimes if you bothered to look away from him. But you’d much rather be watching light play over him, watching infinitely infinitesimal glints of magic consider becoming outside of him.

Not as much on his arm as it does other places, and it doesn’t spill over the way it does...oh, it’s doing it now, isn’t it? He knows he makes a tiny noise; for you the sound’s swallowed by the crash of the surf and the whistle of the wind, but you feel his magic as it beads up in his pubic symphysis to be absorbed by your body, tingling and deep.

Stars, do you know what it _does_ to him? How good his magic feels to you, the way you’re making him feel it right back. You’re _real_ good at this, in his humble opinion. And he’s ready to lie back and take it as long as you want, as much as you’re willing to give him.

You; the secondary dimension of his vision is full of nothing but. Bronze and gold, and sweat and honey. Soft and hot, strong and safe. Paired like his traits, paired like balance, paired like the way you bookend your thoughts with soft utterances. Nothing pure about you, just you doing your best. Thinking through everything slow and thorough, deciding to love him all over again each day, every moment. He trusts your judgement, and isn’t that something else? Really does something to him. Makes him _feel_ it. Crazy.

Your fingers blend into his soul a little more, and the deep quiver runs through his body from the nape of his neck, all the way to his pelvis in your lap and back, loosening his bones even more in its wake.

It’s so beautiful here.

So beautiful.

_Don’t you love it?_

“I really, really do. It’s phenomenal, but everything I’ve seen him do has been.”

“welp, gotta say I wasn’t really expecting that to make the cut,” Sans comments wryly, pointing a fingerbone at the lower left quadrant of Papyrus’s latest and greatest artwork.

You sigh. “Well, do you want to explain what you’re pointing at?”

He looks over a little sheepishly at you. “oh, uh. sorry. basically, that’s the part where i tripped ‘im up. he almost fell, an that hardly ever happens. paps is no slouch, y’know.” You nod sagely, and you see the points in his sockets drawn back to your mouth yet again, making you grin.

Tinting your lips for ARTJOG had definitely been a fun decision, since Sans isn’t very used to you changing your appearance in that sort of way. You don’t bother with jewelry, and your hair’s too short for most accessories. Even your haircut is pretty much always the same, and you haven’t colored it in maybe a decade. Premature grey runs in your mom’s side of the family (you assume, since both you and your sister started getting them by the time you were 25), and you like being able to see the ones you have, feel like you’ve earned them like a prize for having reached this age. Another year without getting cancer, being hit by a meteor, murdered, falling down the stairs, or dying for one reason or the other. You like your aging.

It means you’re still alive.

Are you, though?

Yes.

Yes, you’re alive.

Sans is frowning up at you, looking concerned.

“I….” you shut your mouth, then open it again. “Sans, I don’t think...”

He smiles a little sadly. Takes your hand into his cool fingerbones and gives it a squeeze. The sunset’s a perfect blue-pink-orange, lending an even more preternatural glow to Papyrus’s latest portrait.

You’ve already told him, haven’t you? Probably a bunch of times. Oh, well.

You squeeze his hand back as you watch Undyne, Papyrus, and Frisk sprinting around the “track” chalked into the lawn in between Alphys and Undyne’s house and the multipurpose shed of wonders.

“it’s okay if you wanna tell me,” he says quietly. “i’m feelin’ better now, i think.” Then he shrugs, glances up at you. “not that it, uh. means much to you at the moment, i guess?”

He watches his brother outpace Undyne as they sprint around the curve, Frisk’s sweaty bulk about ten laps behind the both of them as the sun sinks a little further to kiss the horizon, bathing the scenery in hot fuchsia and salmon fire.

Frisk’s fingers are illuminated in _all_ the colors that flash from the thin sheet- screen of their television, and you keep your eyes on them instead of the captions. You’ve given up trying to get them to answer your questions about what didn’t happen, but you haven’t given up otherwise.

You won’t.

And you won’t let _him_ give up either.

His snores are a balm, and even Papyrus’s buzzsaw noises are soothing after the storm before it.

“How can I give up on him when I _took his place_? Chara’s place?” Frisk sobs quietly as they gesture, looking only at the screen. “I know Toriel’s not my real mom. I probably don’t even have one. I tried to find out a long time ago, you know? But there’s just… nothing. I don’t exist. _I’m nothing_.”

You sigh; wait to reply since they’re not looking at you. Maybe they won’t ever look at you, but you won’t give up.

Not on any of them.  
Because they’ll get there. There’s no doubt in either of your minds that Frisk will finish this not-a-race. ARTJOG lasts for 50 laps, and 50 is how many they’ll jog.

Even if they have to come back tomorrow, or every morning this week. 50 laps.

50 chances to make it to space in time.

He turns back from the bar at Grillby’s, four identical glasses held between his fingers.

He shuffles over to the blanket you have spread out on the grass.

He stumbles and his eye lights flicker when you open your eyes in his living room at home.

He smiles over at you, then strokes your fingers with his sunset-tinged phalanges and gazes back into his portrait.

He’s lying on the blanket, fingerbones curling tiny and perfect out of the sleeves of his hoodie, relaxed against soft cotton.

“We didn’t make it out of that explosion, did we, Sans?” you pant, adjusting your sweaty grip on his ilium.

His sockets soften as he stares into the sun, and his grin does too as a bead of magic traces its way from his left socket, down his parietal bone, and soaks into the soft blanket underneath his skull.

Nope. You sure didn’t.

Except you _had._

It’s probably okay, right? Even if you’re experiencing 5,184,227 seconds simultaneously, and this is the first time he’s been able to get out of bed in seventeen days.

“It’s all happening now,” you add softly, and he moves one of his arms down from over his head for just a moment, long enough to rub your knee soothingly. He knows; you told him about it. You can still tell him, though.

He knows, and it’s okay.

He puts his arm back up, his shirt sliding up a little more with it until you can see his floating ribs in there, light and shadow defying each other inside his body. Fuck, he looks so good to you.

He’s alive, and the sun’s warm, and the wind’s cool, and the water’s lovely, and the way you feel deep in his soul is so intense and a little rough and kinda hot, the way you feel fucking him on a blanket in one of his favorite places to sit and think about a whole lotta nothing... It’s better than okay; it’s _good_ , isn’t it?

It’s _good_.

You smile, and your eyes prickle because, oh god. _It is._ The sun and the early summer wind in perfect balance to fuel your passion and cool your exertion, the big box of food and drinks for afterwards because he’s going to need it, the anticipation of the rush he’s going to feel in just a little bit.

So soon. He’s going to _feel it_.

You give him a little taste right _now_ , and he arches up, moaning helplessly.

Five more minutes, not that that means anything.

When you take the shortcut back to his place, the first thing that happens after you open your eyes and feeling Sans stagger is Papyrus wrapping both of you into a big, bony hug.

“IT’S ABOUT TIME YOU GOT HOME,” he chides in relief. “I WAS STARTING TO THINK I’D HAVE TO GO IN AFTER YOU, AND I’M REALLY NOT DRESSED FOR HOMECOMING.”

“Um,” you say, blinking up in surprise. “Where...are we late? Is it already time?”

“FOR EGGS? YES, THEY’LL BE DONE IN FIVE MINUTES.”

You give Sans another taste of how he’s going to feel in five minutes, and he bends his neck back to reveal cervical vertebrae glinting light-and-shadow, stark white in the sun. You can’t wait to have them in your mouth, and it’s lovely because you already do if you think about it. He keeps his eyes on the sky, his thoughts on nothing in particular, and his body on yours slicking rhythmically at the magic-packed joint at the core of him. Your little fleshy bump testing the density of his tight magic, and oh god, that feels so good. Little wet pushes, curious and insistent.

Did you know sometimes your bodies together like this, you and him rubbing those parts of yourself back and forth, it makes him think of two slimy little snails falling in love? Rubbing up on each other, so excited to be alive they can’t hold it in. So happy to be together.

“How are you _so. Fucking. Cute._ ,” you pant, grinning and grinding down on him, tension mounting in you as you curve your fingers into his luminously iridescent soul, middle finger teasing into the cleft underneath to make sure he _feels_ just how cute he is.

Your soul practically explodes with how he looks under you like this, the sheen of iridescence on his dentalium, the way the inside of his skull stays so dark, even though sunlight should be shining into it, rendering the white points inside invisible. The way his shirt and hoodie are starting to bunch up under his chin a bit; the precisely tiny bones of his hands, fingers relaxed and curling out of the sleeves half-pulled over them. Their tips like perfect little seashells tumbled smooth in the surf, only a year or so from becoming sand. The way they fade and gleam as clouds cover and reveal the sun, the way the pips in his eye sockets expand and contract, delicately plucking at the sights before them. You love him so much, and you’re so glad to have him.

So happy to be together, paired like bacon and...

“This isn’t eggs,” you protest as Papyrus hands you the newspaper wrapped bundle of grease, the unmistakeable redolence of Grillby’s clean frying oil manages to find your nostrils through the stiff breeze coming off over the watefront where the convertible is parked. In fact, this very much seems like a spot for parking, very romantic. Very scenic.

“It’s burger.”

“I’M GLAD TO SEE THAT YOUR ABILITY TO DIFFERENTIATE FOOD ITEMS APPEARS UNAFFECTED, BUT DON’T TELL SANS. HE’LL NEVER LET ME HEAR THE END OF IT. ALSO, DON’T LOOK.”  
You listen to the soothingly synthetic strains of 1980s pop and methodically consume burg in silence, or at least do so long enough for Papyrus to wolf his down, however he manages it. You don’t watch him eat, since he really doesn’t like being seen doing that. Ever, not just when he’s secretly eating a greasy burger he professes to loathe. No milkshake this time, since he’s driving.

“OKAY, YOU CAN LOOK.”

You do, and he’s got a bit of ketchup on his teeth, so you grab a paper napkin and wipe it off. You see him angle his sockets at you peevishly, but he declines to comment.

“HAVE YOU BEEN GOING TO WORK?” He inquires after a moment.

“Not for another…..um. What day is it?”

He tells you, and it immediately blends right back into the rest of it.

“I wish I could make myself stop asking questions like that,” you sigh, but you’re heart’s not really in the complaint. “I’m having a good summer, though.”

“NOT QUITE YET, BUT I’M GLAD TO HEAR IT,” he replies with equanimity. “YOU’LL BE MAKING IT TO ARTJOG, THEN? SINCE YOU CAN’T WORK FOR THE NEXT...HOWEVER LONG RIGHT NOW IS.”

You nod eagerly, finishing your burger in a bite big enough to make your skeletal companion wince. It doesn’t matter since it just dissolves anyhow; you can’t choke on Grillby’s.

“Um...” you think hard, but it’s not coming together like it should. “Where’s Sans, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Papyrus’s sockets droop. Oops. He must be-

“STILL IN BED,” he sighs.

“And you still _would_ be?”

“yup,” Sans replies wryly. “but... i dunno. it was a really weird dream. guess i just really wanted you to see it? ya didn’t have to go all out like this though.”

He sighs heavily, the grooves under his sockets looking especially shadowed, even in the gentle early summer sun. “specially not with me bein’ all...” He shrugs down at himself, sighs instead of finishing his sentence. “seems like a waste of effort on me. but… least i got a shower, i guess.”

You’re leaned back on your hands, delighting in the lack of pain and increased flexibility. It makes it easy to sway to the side, sniff at his neck dramatically. He almost smiles.

“Even if you hadn’t, your smell doesn’t really bother me. I mean, remember last time? Both of us stewing in our own juices in bed for a _week_? I smelled like hot hamburgers and dog ass by the end of that. You just smell like fingernails and book mold when you get stinky, so I’d say you have the advantage there.”

His face softens a little bit at that. You’re about to try and press your advantage when he finally turns to look at you dead on.

“gotta say...seems like you’re coping a lot better than last time. there...some kinda reason for that?”

Welp. There it is. Might as well.

“Because we’re having a really good summer,” you inform him gently.

He frowns at you, shakes his head in bafflement.

“I mean….um.” You sigh, trying to think how to put it. “Remember the problem I had ever since the day we met?”

“the...time thing?”

“Mmhmmm.”

“thought that never really stopped.”

“It didn’t. This is different, though.”

“how so?”

“It’s all happening right now,” you say, and it’s the truth. He sees it in your face, but he still can’t understand. That’s okay, though. God, you love him so much. You can’t help but smile, and he’s responding despite himself.

Interest. Concern. Confusion.

Several somethings replacing the nothing behind his eyes.

“so… what’s happening right now?” he tries, and you really want to put your finger right in that crease between his sockets. You don’t, but the thought of it makes your smile even wider.

“I’m giving you the best fuck I possibly can right here on this blanket, and I’m making you feel _exactly_ what I mean by ‘we’re having a good summer,’” you sigh passionately. “You want me to know what it’s like staring right into the sun, and what all the crabs in the ocean are doing, and how good I look when I’ve got your leg around my waist.” You watch his face go a little iridescent; not as much as it will be soon, but you love it just as much. “We’re looking at Papyrus’s new portrait, and watching Frisk jogging between Alphys’s barn and house like they’re determined to beat Undyne’s record for longest time spent running without dying.”

Your smile fades a little, but doesn’t leave.

“We just got back from the basement under your old place in Snowdin, and you can’t calm down.”

“papyrus...” Sans rasps faintly. “why’s frisk at tori’s?”

Papyrus is very, very still.

“THEY THOUGHT...IT MIGHT BE BETTER? TO STAY THERE. UNTIL….FOR A LITTLE WHILE.”

Sans’s sockets go empty.

“fuck,” he whispers. “ _fuck_ , fuck….”

“IT’S...” Papyrus’s teeth part, but nothing comes out.

“how many times did i die up there?” he rasps, hollow in voice and eye. “when it’s gonna hit me?”

He starts shaking, and Papyrus’s impervious bone face crumples for a split second.

“You’re going to be okay, Sans,” you assure him as his phalanges clatter and rasp over his face, hiding his blank sockets.

“nothin’s okay,” he rasps. “’s never gonna be okay.”

“You’re going to be okay,” you repeat, reach out to touch his sun-warmed bones with your fingers. “Will you let me tell you? Maybe let me show you, too?”

His sockets close as you trace his orbital bone, slide back along his zygomatic process. He leans into your touch, gives a shuddering exhale.

Lovely.

“Yes, it’s lovely. I especially like what you’ve done with the spears. You really turned them into paint, too? It’s...”

“OF COURSE. HOW ELSE WOULD I GET THEM SO GREEN?”

You’re so happy to finally see the massive painting Papyrus had made for Alphys and Undyne’s wedding; you stand in front of it to smile up at Papyrus, you turn your head as you sit on the divan with Mettaton, whose open panel you’re politely ignoring as Alphys’s clever claws sort out his complex guts.

“We never get to really _talk_ , you ever notice that?” you comment, feeling several sheets to the wind. Mettaton just winks, his almost furry-seeming black lashes making the tiniest shifts in expression feel over the top. Speaking of which, you tip up your cup and drain it; pour yourself another as Alphys’s hand darts out and presents the bottle to you with a flourish.

“You’re pretty _handsy_ to have around yourself, Alphys,” you grin, and you see the blush as she ducks her head. It makes you giggle.

“I couldn’t agree _more_ , darling,” Mettaton drawls lasciviously, but his eyes follow Papyrus as he gestures animatedly at Undyne, his snoring brother thrown casually over one shoulder like a particularly high-concept shawl.

“He’s got good taste in accessories,” you comment, winking at the sleek android dramatically sharing the divan with you.

“Is it weird my favorite color is green, even though...” you trail off.

“NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST,” Papyrus grins, and Sans giggles standing next to him, enjoying your emphatic reaction to his brother’s biggest painting.

“YOU’LL NEVER GUESS _MY_ FAVORITE COLOR, HOWEVER. WE ARTISTS ARE _SO_ DIFFICULT TO -”

“It’s red,” you interrupt, and Sans’s smile flattens a little.

“He does love red, but I think blue suits him as well, don’t you?” Mettaton smirks, watching Papyrus adjust his brother absently. You wonder sometimes if bones can dig into bones. Is that comfortable? Well, it doesn’t appear to be disturbing Sans’s beauty sleep. Heh.

He _is_ beautiful, isn’t he?

“You’re so beautiful.”

Another bead of magic, iridescent and impossibly bright, unutterably dark, wells up from his socket and glints inexplicably, sunlight gilding it yellow and cyan it as it slides back towards his auditory meatus. Your hands are occupied in his soul and on his pelvis, but his fingers pinch a bit of his sleeve between them and catch it before it falls in. He believes you; he _feels_ you.

“Can you... mmmm. Can you taste yours, too?”

He can, but they only taste like what he feels. They’re him, after all. Yours taste like _you_.

“you….you know what’s going to happen?” Sans whispers, looking at you in a way that makes you wonder if you’ve ever looked at him like that. Maybe a few times? It’s not good, but it’s not the worst, either. Scared, maybe? An odd thought.

“Of course not,” you scoff. “I only know what’s happening right now, just like anyone else.”

“what’s….” He glances to the side, back to your face. “what’s happening right now?”

“I promised I wouldn’t tell you,” you wink outrageously, wiping ketchup off Papyrus’s teeth without a word. “But I can show you if you want,” you add salaciously. “Do you want to feel it? I think you’ll like it.”

He’s definitely interested now, you can see it in his face.

His face, ecstatic and peaceful as you fuck him so gently it doesn’t even move his head, doesn’t disturb his skygazing even as his hands finally stir.

God, he’s going to feel it. He _feels_ you, and he wants you to know.

“I want you to know something, okay?” you sign when Frisk finally looks over at you, the skeleton snores effectively deafening you. They can see what you’re saying now, they know what you mean.

“Children aren’t _interchangeable_. People aren’t interchangeable. You can’t take Asriel’s place because you’ll never be him, and he’ll never be you, okay?”

You sigh, try to think about how to put it.

“Love is not _finite_. Just like….like our souls aren’t. Love’s _infinite_. It’s not a commodity that has to be hoarded or rationed. There’s enough for everyone, because we just keep making more, we can keep feeling it, and being it, and creating it….” you trail off, but Frisk’s long, glittery eyes stay fixed on you.

“I love you, and I love Chara, too. You know I wasn’t lying, right?”

They nod hesitantly.

“The reason for that’s because I’m not lying right now, I think,” you gesture absently, frowning.

Frisk sobs again. “How can you s _ay that_? Look at...look at what this does to you! To _both of you_! Sans is acting like he might….” They cover their face with their hands, and you sigh, waiting patiently for them to look at you again.

“We’re okay,” you sign when they finally do. “We’re having the best summer of my life.”

“It’s….spring,” they gesture weakly.

You shrug, and they hide their face again, sobbing almost loud enough to drown out the skeleton snores.

You’ll wait to continue until they look at you again.

“Look at me,” you groan heatedly.

He already is, but he knows what you mean. Sans’s eye lights find your face, gold and bronze and soft honey in the sunlight, beads of sweat sunlit crystal on your upper lip.

“It’s _okay_ ,” you gush fervently. “You’re already okay, and we’re having a great time. Do you wanna feel it?”

More than anything.

The bones at his fingertips on both hands sink in next to yours, already thrumming, coming in hot. He exhales tightly, head tilting back even as he keeps the quivering points in his sockets on your face. He’s so ready for this, he can’t wait. The idea makes you laugh, because he’s already felt it, and will for quite some time. Ten points of driving resonance, five separate points of 5,184,227 simultaneous seconds of loving him.

“Here it comes,” you moan softly, and his sockets finally shut, he can’t stop it just like he can’t stop the rush of sensation and emotion you have for him. And you’re so excited to give it, like your own version of the certainty he’d given you the first time he’d let his magic flow into you, driven forth by what you’d felt and shared with him.

Here they come… every golden moment just as you start to laugh together, each time the light catches his bones just right, every touch and kiss and dance and split second you feel your love for him burble up like fizzy champagne and maybe he can’t _know_ this, can’t remember things that haven’t happened for him or count the impressions and sensations you’re giving him…..all he can do is feel and sigh and shake and go limp and quiver and _push._ Oh god, he’s pushing this as hard as he can. Deeper now, he’s giving _everything_ to keep it as long as possible. He needs it so much; he wants to feel this _forever_.

He’s going to be okay, because _he already is_.

“i already am,” Sans whispers in your ear, the loud crackle of the bonfire on the beach keeping you from being overheard. “m’ just gonna ignore it for now, though, k?”

“Wow, really?” He nods almost shyly.

“We should talk about it, shouldn’t we? We said we were going to.”

“let’s wait til your thing’s, uh...over.”

“I don’t really know when that will be for you, though.”

He sighs, eye lights visible even though the fire should be lighting the inside of his sockets. It doesn’t of course.

“i never know when this is gonna happen, either.”

You frown in thought, glance over at him.

“There’s really no reason you couldn’t just go off on your own right now and figure some stuff out.” You can’t tell if he’s blushing or not in this light, but he looks pretty surprised by that suggestion.

“what if it just goes away without you there?”

“Then you’ll know that’s what happens. And you don’t ever have to tell me. It’s not actually any of my business.”

“You don’t think where your own artwork ends up is your business?” Mettaton giggles. Alphys has finished whatever tweaks and repairs she’d been attending to, and is pouring herself a rather large glass of something over at the side table. Her and Undyne’s place really is very nice, although you’ve gotten the impression part of the reason it comes off so clean and fancy is because-

Oops. Yeah, there goes another table. At least Undyne gave Papyrus a chance to set down his brother before she started suplexing. You turn back to Mettaton.

“I mean, it’s all paid for. What happens after that really isn’t-” You frown. “Unless someone’s altered it in some way without noting it or asking?”

“Nothing like that, darling,” he drawls amiably. “It’s okay on the ceiling though, right?”

“SEALING, NOT CEILING,” Papyrus explains to Frisk. “I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW SOMEONE WOULD WAX A CEILING, BUT I AM UNUSUALLY SKILLED IN A DIRECTIONAL AND KINETIC SENSE. WHOSE CEILING NEEDS WAXING?”

“Do you have any s-e-a-l-i-n-g wax?” Frisk reiterates rather than answering the question. “It’s the last thing on the list, although maybe Undyne should have requested a dictionary for her own enrichment,” they smirk.

“I KNOW BETTER THAN TO GET UNDYNE ANY MORE BOOKS,” Papyrus sighs. “THE LAST TIME SHE INVENTED A NEW GAME CALLED ‘DODGEBOOK’. THE AFTERMATH WAS SOMEWHAT REGRETTABLE FOR MY FIFTH RIB. ON COLD DAYS I STILL FEEL IT.”

Just like that, he feels it. He’s not okay, but he can see how to get there. He’s sobbing as he holds his soul in both his hands, giving it everything he’s got in him to hold on to this moment as long as he can. He’s holding your hand with his too, pushing your fingers deep, soaking up every last bit of what you have for him, so many tiny glittering moments of loving him, all of them _now_. Helping him remember how to feel good; showing him a possible path back to a place he can love himself, too.

You lean in as he brings his soul back toward his body, and you lean as close as you can without toppling over. The moment your fingers touch his chest together his sockets scrunch shut, his grin goes almost slack and his head lolls, a softly moaning sigh pushing out of him peacefully. He barely manages to hang on with one leg, then lets it relax off you as you drop to your elbows and press your chest to his. Your hand on his ilium keeps your sweet spot locked against him, and you start pressing hot kisses to his face.

“ohhh... oh _fuck_ ,” he whispers, magic flowing from his sockets, between his legs. His arms come up around your shoulders to hang on loosely, and his leg manages to make it back around your waist on the third try. “how… how the fuck….”

“I don’t know.” You moan against his mandible, tongue under his chin to make him grunt with pleasure. “It’s true, though. Is it good?” you pant, picking up the pace a little. You’re so close.

“never knew you loved it when i make ya laugh so much,” he whispers over the wind and surf, over your rough breathing, getting heavy now. “all at once like that, it’s….s’just... _mmmhh_. i got a good one for ya now,” he groans faintly, still not managing to get his sockets open. “gonna get ya screamin’ my name.”

Undyne’s piano screams out its death throes under Papyrus’s rebuttal suplex, tossing Undyne like a shot put. It was lovely of them to invite you all over for dinner and drinks, even if Sans isn’t exactly conscious. It’s not that much different than usual, according to everyone. Right now it’s just Alphys and Undyne, Papyrus and Mettaton, you and Sans.

You glance over, but Sans is still safe and sound on the other end of the room, sleeping more easily than he had been a day or two ago, in your opinion. He’s fine, and it’s nice to see that Papyrus is starting to believe you enough to occasionally put him down for a few minutes at a time.

Mettaton’s face cracks a little, something sincere peeking through as he watches Papyrus leap elbow-first into the wreckage of the piano. “Thank you,” he says, looking down into his own drink, which he hasn’t actually touched. He looks very good holding it, however. “I really think whatever you're doing...it’s helping.”

You smile sadly.

“He’s not going to help you with it. I mean...I guess I don’t know for _sure_ , but I doubt it.”

“I already know that,” Frisk gestures without rancor. “I don’t...” They glance to the side.

They don’t need Sans for whatever they’re working on, then. Ahhh. Well. They have Alphys, don’t they. You’re not a fucking tree stump, and Frisk’s smart, but they’re a lot younger than you. And you suppose at this point there’s no use in fooling yourself. You usually have a pretty good idea when someone’s trying to hide something, especially if they start to lie about it right in front of you, even if they manage to stop themself in time. Whatever kind of project Frisk has going on for Flowey, Alphys is at the helm. Not that you didn’t know that already, but you’re pretty sure it didn’t have anything to do with whatever exploded and killed all three of you.

You both wince as Sans groans, a terrible, heartrending noise. Frisk’s eyes overflow, and they cover their face with their hands. You hope he sleeps again soon. You wish you could do the same for him that he did for you, before. But that had taken a while to hit you, after all. This seems like it’s hitting him like a ton of bricks, and has been for a while now.

You can see why Frisk made the choice they had, but they’re still responsible for it.

“I shouldn’t have come back,” Frisk says, still sobbing.

“It’s not you being here that’s bothering him,” you inform them matter-of-factly. “It bothers _you_ to be here and see this, but I think it might actually be helping. And it _definitely_ helps Papyrus.”

You glance at where he holds his brother on the couch, looking mostly indifferent even as his arms tighten, the light from the screen playing over his white face like it’s another just another screen being projected on.

Blank.

Total space cadet.

“what’d one astronaut say t’the other when he couldn’t find the milk?” Sans groans ecstatically, clutching your shoulders as his body arches into yours eagerly.

You take his vertebral process out of your mouth just long enough to gasp, “What?”

“in space, no one can. here, use cream,” he pants, tightening his leg around your waist.

The upended glass ketchup bottle gleams in the magical mock-spotlight as Sans winks, point at you.

“if ya didn’t laugh, take it up with my complaint department,” he chuckles. “be nice, though. they been workin’ overtime lately. And time’s been workin’ them over, too!” Everyone who didn’t laugh at the bad jokes still manages some sort of amused noise at that.

It makes your soul feel a warm glow.

“I’m gonna come,” you whisper harshly against his temporal bone. “Do your _worst_.”

He opens even further for you, shoving the texture of his magic-slicked groove up against your clit.

“H-have you heard that- _ahh_ , that entropy isn't what it _used to be_?” he groans, and you’re there; you’re _there_. God, you’re there,

you’re...

there

he

is, coming back from the bar with four drinks between his fingers. He drops one off at Lola’s table; another for Doggo, then he sets his eye lights back on your face like a homing beacon. He’s wearing your favorite shirt, the one that has a print on the front to look like a ribcage and spine. It just seems so… filthy, and you love that about it. He sees you staring at it again, and his grin broadens into something that makes the shirt look even filthier. Well, he did promise revenge for your tinted lips at ARTJOG, which apparently had reminded him of your aroused genitalia.

God, you love him.

You really….

You stare down into the reddish brown of the same cherry liquid that was your first and favorite taste of monster-style drinking, and when he puts his arm around you, that’s the only thing you feel.

The drink’s the only thing you taste, and the music, clinking, and chatter blending into a comfortable hubbub is the only thing you hear.

You blow a long, wet raspberry at nothing in particular.

“Well, _t_ _hat_ was weird,” you sigh heavily, then lean in and give Sans a kiss.

“what’s weird?” he asks, eye lights scanning the familiar faces all around.

“What day is it?” you try.

“fifteenth a june,” he replies by rote, like you’ve asked him this question already too many times to count, even for him. Maybe even too many times _today_. Who knows. But….

“That was a weird two months,” you reply, and his teeth part as he turns his head slowly to stare at you.

“is it….done?” he chokes.

“I guess so.”

You shrug under the weight of his sweater-padded armbones, take a sip.

“it’s just this here, right now?”

You nod, smile.

“huh,” he replies, looking confused, then pleased.

“guess i gotta get used to you knowin what day it is again, eh? might have ta come up with some new material. probably gonna fire my writer, though, so i guess i’m out a job.” He must have a few more shows left for this run, you’re not totally sure how many, but it’s not important if he’s canceling them anyhow.

“You love canceling shows,” you reply dryly. “It gives you an excuse not to do them. And you’re _already_ used to my bullshit, so no complaining about it.”

“gonna head back to work soon then, huh? you miss it?”

“I haven’t had time to miss it yet,” you frown at him indignantly. “Actually, it was supposed to be my day off.”

His expression turns slowly incredulous like water pouring out onto sand. Then he doubles over laughing, tears pouring out of his eyes with mirth and love, with relief, with just plain feeling good.

It’s the best time you’ve ever had.

 


	34. the key of farts

Watching Sans dodge a complex matrix of silver hammers is one of the most breathtaking sights you’ve ever seen, not in the least because you’d noticed a few minutes ago that his broad hips don’t really move. Even when his slippered feet leave the ground, when he’s spinning under a split level volley with his hands locked behind his back, it’s like they’re the pivot everything else moves _around_. Like when you hold out a chicken and bob it up and down, its head stays steady; chickens don’t get dizzy. You’d laugh at the comparison if it wasn’t so incredible to watch the feats of movement Sans is capable of happening right in front of you.

He bends and ducks, spins and flips faster than your eye can follow, and his sockets are shut the entire goddamn time.

Your heart’s still in your throat, because you know that even one hammer meeting its mark could hurt him pretty badly. Could end up killing him, even. Not as easily as a human (including you, a fact you hate) could, but it’s still pretty dangerous for him to be doing this. You guess that’s why he’d been insisting you see this: for something to be able to hurt him, it actually has to _hit_ him first.

And you have to admit, you’re not sure how anything could manage to do that. It’s the apotheosis of all the subtle ducks and dodges of fry baskets and drunken jackasses you’ve seen him do outside of encounters.

It’s also kind of turning you on.

That’s a little embarrassing, but then again this is the first time you’ve seen him exert himself outside a bedroom. And it’s a not-so-subtle reminder of how he always knows _exactly_ where everything is. You smirk a little thinking about it. Then you sigh, because your face is getting hotter than you’d like it to be in public, and technically this _is_ still public, even if it’s out of the way.

You’re dumbfounded that anything _anyone_ could throw at Sans had ever made him “step wrong” enough to crack a metatarsal, but you suppose he and Papyrus have had eons or whatever to come up with ways to surprise each other. Gerson seems pretty skilled, based on the intricate patterns he’s managing to send across the field of darkness that he’d somehow been able to include you in, but you’re fairly sure none of these is going to come even close to scoring.

Any time someone else would take a step, Sans just unravels reality, then comes back into existence slightly off of where he’d been before. Seeing it doesn’t bother you emotionally (existentially?) as much as it used to, but in this context it is a lot easier on your stomach. You wonder if it takes a lot of effort, but it seems like when the distance is that short, it’s not as much strain on...whatever it is in him that makes him able to do that.

Every once in a while the turn passes to Sans, but he just checks and passes it back, although he hasn’t bothered to explain why. Who knows. Maybe it’s just because Gerson’s so old. But his advanced age hadn’t stopped him from coming to the college once a week ever since Frisk had given the go ahead to start letting soul studies students have real encounters, instead of whatever on earth Professor Bob had had them doing. Who knows, maybe they were real encounters, and she just told them they’d die if they looked down or something. That seems like her style.

Well...maybe that’s a little uncharitable; you wonder if some of the other Temmies’ opinions on Bob have rubbed off on you. They seem to find her a bit stuck up, and you can sort of see why. Then again, you’ve noticed monster gossip can be pretty sharp. Cultural thing? Maybe their backbiting’s just honed from so long in limited space with so many people, maybe not enough privacy. Might even be a way of coping. It’s harder to lie down and give in to despair when there’s at least a dozen people constantly annoying the shit out of you.

You make a tiny noise when Sans finally unclasps his hands, using one of them on the ground as a sort of springboard to spin his legs up into the air in a half-cartwheel away from a vertical volley that comes apart halfway to him. He winks out and back, ducks, slides to the side and then…

“spare,” he huffs quietly. Gerson nods, and it’s done. Light filters back into the space you’re standing in, dancing through the heavy-leaved trees in the big, rolling hills that have been partially cleared to the south of the college. There’s not much else between here and the waterfront except a few roads and copses of trees like this one; still technically college grounds though.

Sans had brought you out here with Gerson after the Soul Studies meeting had broken up for the day. Apparently Gerson has an unusual ability that allows him to bring noncombatants into encounters in a way that allows them to observe, but they can’t involve themselves or get hit by anything. It makes him highly sought after as a trainer for young monsters, you’d been told. Sans had been asked to provide transportation for him today, and he’d come by your office to collect you for this because he’d wanted to show you why you and Papyrus were the only ones who really worried about him being able to defend himself. He also just wanted to spend some time with you. Maybe show off a little. This is very okay with you.

“That was crazytown bananapants,” you say sincerely as you approach the former combatants, and Gerson breaks into his unusual guffawing laughter.

“I don’t know what that means, but you’re right!” he hollers in the voice of someone who’s been progressively losing their hearing for so long, it might only be a functional memory at this point. “Sans can give me a workout without even sending anything my way, and if that isn’t crazypants I don’t know what is! Wahahahaha!!”

Sans just opens one socket, shrugs. His hands are already back in his pockets, and he’s not even sweating. Well, it’s not sweat and it doesn’t happen for the same reasons, so you suppose it makes sense even though it’s hot enough out here to make _you_ sweat a little just standing here, even in the shade.

“Welp, that’s enough chewing the fat for today, don’t you think, boy? Why don’t you take me back to my hole so I can take a nap.”

“best idea you had all day, oldtimer,” Sans smirks. “be right back.”

He is. He takes your hand right away, wiggles a bare fingertip into your palm before grabbing and squeezing.

“you hungry?” he asks salaciously, and winks while you blush again. Apparently certain expressions can linger.

Fucker.

***

“I mean, it’s like I said. I remember more than I expected to, but it’s still pretty jumbled up. So I went back to request my records played back from the appointments. My sister wouldn’t really take no for an answer either, since obviously I couldn’t really pretend I was fine. Not with _that_.”

Sans picks at his goo sandwich absently. He’s tearing it apart more than eating it, although he does push a shred between his teeth every once in a while. You’d told him a few times the eateries on campus provide monster food in limited quantities, but he’d still been surprised for some reason. Maybe it’s the selection or something. You still don’t actually know what half this stuff even is, and you probably never will.

“i dunno,” he drawls amiably. “not like you were in pain or anything. little out of it, maybe, but...”

You can’t help but smile. “It’s hard to keep appointments when you don’t know what day it is,” you point out. “And most humans expect everyone to know that sort of thing. Anyways, the one doctor said it was some kind of agnosia from a stroke or aneurysm, I keep meaning to call Ange and tell her. The other thought it was...”

You trail off because he stopped picking at his food to look at you strangely.

“What?”

“you already told her, cause she’s here. stayin at your place.”

You frown. “Wait a...shit. She’s _here_?”

He nods slowly. “when it first happened, she wouldn’t believe you when you said you were okay, had to come see for herself.” He rasps the tip of his thumb across his forehead. “she only stayed a little bit, but toward the end she came back. maybe that’s why you forget sometimes, huh? she got here right before you snapped out of it. you’re staying with us most nights, cause you were saying you want ange to feel like she’d have a place of her own if she came to live here for good. the kids are there, too.”

You frown at your food.

“What kind of sandwiches are these? I always wondered.”

Reminded to eat, he shoves another shred between his teeth. “we call em snips’n’snails. can’t tell ya more than that.”

You sigh, shake your head at yourself. “I’m really sorry. I always end up doing that, don’t I?”

“s’okay. it’s a cultural thing. food’s real important to you, like you said a while back. like...you don’t cook much, but when you do, it’s something your mom used to make, or something you came up with yourself.” He smiles fondly. “remember that stuff you an paps made me that one time?”

“I didn’t _invent_ mac and cheese, Sans,” you point out with a bemused grin.

“you invented monster mac and cheese, s’far’s i’m concerned. still dunno how you made it so spicy.”

“I can’t give away my secret ingredient,” you answer with your nose in the air. It’s powdered beetles from Toriel. “Otherwise how can I keep you crawling back for more?”

“heh. you got your ways.”

“I think I’m gonna ask her,” you say after a while.

He gives himself a second to rewind to where you changed the subject.

“gonna ask her to move here?” he tries.

“Yeah. I...” you trail off. “She’s really here?”

“mmhmm.” he glances over. “you wanna head over to your place for a bit?”

You nod sheepishly.

***

“I want you to move here.”

You’re standing with your back leaned against the wall in the one spot in your apartment you can see both the dining area and the living room depending on how you turn your head. Your sister sits at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee in front of her, and the living room is where the kids are playing some kind of projection game. They’re leaned back against a snoring Sans, who’s lying fully clothed and loglike facing the backrest of your still new double-wide couch. Well, Shonda’s playing. Nattie’s already succumbed to the Nap Aura of Doom, and their matrix has been coopted by Shonda, who is now double-fisting it. It seems effective, but then again you have no idea what the objectives are for a game that consists of projected tubes and cubes.

It’s called Tubes and Cubes.

You feel old, but not in a bad way.

“It’s not that easy, Goob.”

“Nothing’s easy if you make it hard,” you reply, watching Shonda surreptitiously pretend she doesn’t know any curse words.

She sighs, keeping her temper admirably. “I know it’s hard for you right now, with the whole brain thing making you-”

“That’s not why,” you interrupt evenly. “I don’t need you to take care of me; I’m trying to take care of _you_. I know you’re not happy. I wish you’d give me a chance to show that you don’t have to-”

“It’s not that easy, Goob,” she repeats sadly.

“It’s not a brain thing,” you say. “It’s a time thing. I can’t explain everything to you, but it was like….two months happened in one second. That’s why I can’t remember a lot of it. Humans aren’t wired to process that much information at once.”

“You could have had a stroke or an aneurysm that makes you think that, or feels...like that. You don’t know-”

“If we’re splitting hairs, you have no way to know _you’re_ not having an aneurysm _right now_ ,” you point out wryly.

“Can I get the names of your postdoc philosophy mentors so I can ding dong ditch them except with punching them in the face instead?”

You sigh quietly instead of replying.

“Matt’s coming up tonight so we can talk about it,” she continues. She probably already told you, and you probably fucking forgot. It’s kind of impressive you haven’t run into problems with this at work, but you suppose work shit must be running on some kind of brain-style backup generator. You’re not about to look that gift horse in the mouth. And truth be told, you’re not unhappy like this. It’s straightening itself out. In the meantime, you just want a chance to be as happy as you _can_ , be with the people you love until you get annihilated or whatever. Unhappened. Unmade, maybe? Well, _double_ whatever. That’s the same thing everyone wants out of life, right? You almost smile, thinking of your mom.

_Feeling sorry for y’self? Join the club. You ain’t special, babygirl._

And instead of doing your best to be happy and get along, you’re standing here continuing to provoke an argument.

“I bet he is,” you reply flatly. “He thinks I’m a problem you’re supposed to solve. He doesn’t _get it_.”

She’s quiet for a long minute before she replies. It stings worse than you thought it would.

“ _You_ don’t get it, either,” she whispers, sounding almost ashamed.

She’s so right your face feels like it’s going to burn off, and you _hate_ it.

“I don’t think it’s wrong that I want things to be easy. I want everything to just work like it’s supposed to. Is that so bad?”

“No,” she says, and the sympathy in her voice makes your throat tight. “I want that, too.”

And of course Shonda looks away from her game and notices you just in time to watch a giant, fat, stupid tear fall out of your eye. You scowl, scrub it away and stalk stiffly over to the fridge. You open it, then lean over until your forehead’s pressed against it and just….stand there, looking for nothing. Looking at nothing. Feeling big and dumb, feeling like a burden.

Ange’s hand rubs small circles between your shoulderblades for twenty minutes, which is how long Shonda takes to thaw from your scowl enough to call from the other room, asking for some juice.

You finally reach in to grab it. You pour it for her, bring it to her, and apologize very sincerely.

You and Sans head back to his place.

***

“I need to talk to you,” Frisk gestures as soon as you get there, because of fucking course they do.

“If it’s something heavy, can we make an appointment?” you reply, trying not to seem too put upon. You fail.

There’s a lot of that going around today, you’re noticing.

Their lips and eyes do that pressed-into-a-line thing, and you sigh, trudge to the table. Sans just shuffles up to his room as you slump dejectedly into a chair. Fucker.

You wave for Frisk’s attention. “Can you make us some coffee?” You sign petulantly.

“We’re out,” they reply, and you groan faintly. Well, at least they can’t hear it. “I have a question about hypothetical scenarios involving ethical praxis of respect for posthumous bodily autonomy.”

You cover your eyes with your hands, groaning and rubbing for a few minutes, because _of course they do_.

They’re narrowing their eyes at you again when you take your hands down.

“I _know_ when you’re groaning,” they point out archly.

***

“I hate everything,” you mumble into Sans’s spine through several layers of clothing.

“no ya don’t,” he replies lightly. “jus’ had a bad day. well. part a one, anyhow. lunch was good. the good news is, day’s over now.”

“I’m too cranky to be tired yet,” you crank crankily. “Turn the stars on.”

He laughs softly. “k.”

His room goes dark, and the soft lights he’s embedded into the walls of this version of his bedroom glow to life. It almost instantly makes your shoulders relax; very slightly, but noticeable. Every little bit helps at this point.

“Tell me a funny story.”

He laughs at you some more, and you let him. It makes you feel slightly better.

“bout what?”

“Butts.”

“k. so one time me n tori took frisk to the beach and they sat on a jellyfish.”

“Your delivery leaves much to be desired,” you crank crankily.

“had ta leave early cause she came running when they screamed, right? an she got there just in time to see frisk tell a jellyfish to suck their dick. made us drive all the way home so frisk could put a g in the swear jar.”

You snort hard into Sans’s spine, and realize his pubis is making a huge dent in your chest, and it’s probably less than comfortable for him. You finally lean up on your elbows.

“No way,” you say, grinning a little despite yourself. “Show me.”

His phalanges click through what’s certainly the crudest way to say that.

“Oh my god,” you say, finally just hanging your head down to giggle it out. You give a heavy sigh, and finally haul your sorry carcass off him, then flop your way back up to lie down next to him on his mattress. You’d come upstairs, ignored Otherdoor, pushed open the door to his bedroom a little recklessly and just collapsed facedown on top of him like that when Frisk had finally gotten done with you.

“Is Otherdoor still the bathroom?” you ask after a few minutes, shifting.

“nah. gotta use paps’s”

“I’m going to piss in your closet.”

“no you’re not. ‘preciate the thought, though.”

It’s true. You’re not.

“want me to take you?”

“You’re really do that for me?” you purr, touched.

“s’kinda the whole point a shortcuts,” he shrugs, then hauls himself to his feet with a groan.

You materialize in the bathroom, and Frisk’s in there taking a shit.

“I’m taking a shit,” they sign at you both, unfazed. One handed, and they don’t even put down their phone. Or look away from it.

You give Sans a dirty look.

“You didn’t check, huh?”

He shrugs.

“Can you _please_ just make Otherdoor the bathroom again?”

“Can you please have this conversation somewhere else?” Frisk gestures.

Sans is still holding your hand in his, looking thoughtful. He squeezes your fingers, then turns to look at you.

“Wanna just get a hotel?”

You blink. Think about it.

“Can you make sure no one’s taking a shit in it?”

“yup.”

“Then yes, that is a fucking fantastic idea.”

“Have _fun_ ,” Frisk gestures pointedly.

***

Turns out the hotel room’s one of Mettaton’s so all he has to do is send a message and show up. It’s not super fancy or anything, but you can use the bathroom. And the bathtub, which you both make good use of. The soak improves your mood, as does the fistful of pills you wash the bath down with.

You both wiggle into the sizable bed with twin sighs, and wrap your arms around each other. It’s funny how you feel so tired of talking, but you don’t get tired of talking to _him_. Like it doesn’t count as energy drain; it’s a neutral exchange. He might be one of the only people you’ve ever been around who makes you feel like that. It’s...nice.

Also nice? Making out.

“hmm,” Sans hums happily. “you didn’t always do that, huh.”

You pull back from his teeth. “Is it okay?”

“yeah,” he adds mildly. “s’nice.” Oh yeah. that’s why you always think ‘it’s nice’ to yourself. You’re absorbing his little word thingies. There’s a word for word thingies, but you can’t remember at the moment. That’s okay. He’s absorbing your potty mouth, so it works out.

“i got a lot of feeling there,” he continues gamely. “just wondering why you do it, since you didn’t always.”

You feel a slow smile creep over your face, then you lean up and press your forehead to his.

“You didn’t always do this, either.”

You feel his magic tingle against your forehead.

“heh. guess not. not til we were in bed that time.”

“Wait a sec,” you whisper naughtily. “Were you _already_ making out with me? When...oh my god...” you giggle.

“can’t exactly make out with no lips,” he points out evasively.

“You push your face on things you like,” you tease. “You _liiiiiike_ me,” you add.

He gives a put upon sigh.

“ya caught me. guess i gotta fuck you now.”

“I’m too tired,” you grin at him. “I’m also on drugs.”

“thanks for reminding me.”

He rolls away from you to rummage over the side of the bed, and returns with one of his short, chubby plastic bottles with the label all ripped off.

“Where do you get that stuff?” you ask as he sets it against his teeth and tips it back. They part only slightly, but you suppose when it’s totally liquid that gets the job done.

“grillbz’s the only one can make it,” he replies as the liquid glugs away. “or, well. fuku too, now I guess.” You can see underneath in the space in his mandible, all the way to the roof of his mouth, even between...his teeth. Huh. Something really surprising occurs to you.

“Your mouth isn’t the same from the other way, is it?”

“huh?” his eye lights flicker at you gently.

“Between your teeth is a different space,” you say, a little awed. “But under here...” You touch the inside of his chin gently. “It’s a different...space.”

“yeah,” he confirms as if he’s not really sure what you’re getting at. The bottle’s done, and he tosses it away casually. It’ll probably end up back in his phone later.

“Wow,” you breathe, staring at the tiny line of darkness remaining between his teeth. Another dimension, apparently. You look up, meet his eyes. “Does it feel...private?”

“it…?”

“In your mouth,” you add.

“never thought about it,” he says, darting glances to the side. “but...guess so. yeah.”

“Mine too,” you admit, still feeling hot in the face. “I think that’s why I like kissing you so much. And I really liked it that time you let me put my tongue in there.”

“heh,” he says weakly. “never had anything in my mouth that wasn’t food before.”

“this is a sexy conversation,” you whisper, grinning even harder.

“thought you were tired.”

“I am.”

It’s a tragedy, really. Someone should write a song about it. _Too Tired To Fuck_ : a power ballad in the key of farts.

“how bout we go to sleep, then wake up and do it?” he suggests reasonably.

“Feed me first.”

“you got a real list of demands today,” he sighs, but he actually looks more pleased than anything. And you know, you’re not thinking about your shitty day anymore, are you?

It’s kind of romantic.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really tried SO hard to give you all a break from my soulcrushing barrage of neverending updates but instead I just ended up writing a sidefic for this one.
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/17952167
> 
> Stuff that will happen/happening/happened when reader’s not there. Totes optional. Handsy Sansy: Origins, what Papyrus gets Up To when no one’s around, Who the Hell is Grillby, and uhhhhhHHhhh Smut.
> 
> Anyhoo don’t brace yourself YET but this story’s heading into its penultimate arc and it’s Heavy jsyk <3


	35. where hot dogs come from

When you open your eyes the next morning, you’re staring into spinal processes and realizing there’s a summer thunderstorm making the noise that woke you, even through the thick walls of the downtown hotel. You’re just as happy since it’s the start of your off days. You even feel a little grateful, since both of you had forgotten to pull the blackout curtain shut. Bright sun would be piercing, but the stormlight coming through the wispy white undercurtain’s warm-grey and soft, like turtledove feathers.

You roll out of bed to use the bathroom (which is apparently a luxury at this point in your life, sheesh), brush your teeth and wash your face. You return and look out at the oddly soothing gloom, smile and get right back into bed. Sans isn’t snoring, but he still seems to be unconscious for now. You lie on your side facing him, summon your viewer and plop around in your reading interface for a while, checking to see if your serials have updated. They haven’t, so you decide to check the hotel’s node to see how old the building is (it really does seem awfully sturdy despite the ferocity of the storm outside) and-

Huh. For some reason you’re already keyed into it, and there’s several options for your to order food at no charge, and a few others that have prices listed in G. Your face gets hot; you didn’t realize you’re getting monsters-only perks now.

“m’not even awake yet, an i got you blushing already?” Sans’s voice is muzzy, deepened by sleep. “’pparently i’m putting in too much effort if all’s i gotta do is lay there to get you going.”

“ _I’m_ putting in for another night,” you grin, “since if you put in any less effort, you’ll be in a coma. I’m willing to accommodate, so I hope you appreciate it. Since I actually have to _pay_ ,” you point out, making the arrangements as you speak. “It looks like shit outside, and I’ve decided we’re staying in bed today.” He exhales in amusement that turns into one of his yell-yawns, then he wiggles back around to face you with his sockets half-mast.

“Apparently I get food ordering privileges in Mettaton’s hotel now,” you inform him, and he grunts acknowledgement.

“guess you hit it off, huh?”

“I...” you sigh, dismiss your viewer without ordering anything. “I remember that a little bit. He thanked me for something, but I don’t remember what it was.”

You press your lips together, and Sans’s eye lights harden. He can predict your mood shifts now.

“Do _you_ know what Frisk’s up to with Alphys?” you ask bluntly.

“toldja already, you can’t get anything outta alphie she doesn’t want you to know.”

Well, there’s your non-answer.

“Are you and she on the same page? Waiting?”

“she is whether she wants to be or not,” he answers cryptically. His face gives away nothing; he’s just lying there on his back now with his joined hands on top of his skull.

“Sans….I know they’re trying to do something that might be...ethically dubious. Some of the questions Frisk’s been asking me lately are kind of freaking me out.”

He sighs, then turns his head on the pillow to meet your gaze frankly.

“i don’t know anything about that.”

He’s telling the truth. Dammit.

“look at it this way,” he continues, looking back at the ceiling. “if they’re doing something that’s leading up to some kind of...attempt. you really want that to happen sooner? rock that boat and you might tip us all out.”

“’Don’t rock the boat’, isn’t exactly my life philosophy,” you reply a little more sharply than you intended, but he answers before you can ameliorate it.

“mine either,” he points out, “but i don’t take it personally. i know you’re scared, specially after that last round with frisk.” You don’t think the flatness in his voice is for you; it’s the same way he sounds whenever he talks about unhappening. Dying, then not-dying. He rolls over again to face you, looks at you silently for a long time.

“Do you _know_ why this happens to me?” It’s one of those questions that’s been needling you for a while, and here it is, slipped out to lay like something sharp between you, waiting for one of you to grab it.

You stare at each other intently for a considerable amount of time, and you eventually realize he’s not going to answer. He’s not even going to-

“you can tell when i’m lying,” he states quietly. “so i won’t. i’ll just say... i can’t do anything about it.”

Well, that cat’s out of the bag.

“you can tell what i’m thinking half the time by looking at my face,” you rebut bitterly, and there’s really nothing either of you can say to that. The silence extends itself, coiling up and around both of you oppressively.

He ends up being the one to break the stalemate.

“sometimes... you gotta pick your boats,” he says, slow and serious. “i picked mine, an i’m not gonna rock it.”

Apparently that’s as much of the truth as he can tell you. You nod acceptance, hold out your hand. He takes it, and you fiddle with each other’s fingers for a bit. For some reason you’ve always found it soothing, and you can tell he does too. Especially when things get a little rocky in the communication department.

“I guess we’re on the same page whether I want to be or not too, huh?”

He sighs, but nods acknowledgement.

“Well. I wanted to talk about it, and we did.” You keep your face as blank as you can. “But there’s one more thing I’ve been dying to ask you, and I just can’t wait anymore.”

His eyes flicker very faintly. “what?”

“Why doesn't Papyrus have eye thingies?”

The flicker’s sharper this time.

“huh?” he looks absolutely baffled.

“The...” You point at your own eyes, then his. “The point thingies. Pupils? Why doesn’t he have them?”

“he...does,” he says after a minute. “i dunno what you-”

Then his expression changes abruptly as he breaks into a hoarse chuckle, shutting his sockets and pressing the back of his free hand to his forehead. “you can’t _see_ em! oh, that’s...” He laughs some more, while you wait with your lips pursed. Another monster thing you can’t see, just like soul...feelings, and Papyrus’s paintings. It’s a little annoying, but whatever.

“they’re black,” he says when he calms down a little. “we jus’ got different color eyes, darlin’. same way anybody might, even brothers.”

“Oh.” You blink. That’s a considerably more pedestrian answer than you’d been expecting. You and your sister have slightly different eye colors too. For some reason, this heartens you quite a bit.

“next time he gets worked up over something, take a look. you can see em sometimes then.” His smile softens as you chuckle a little bit at yourself, too. Some mysteries aren’t; all you have to do is be brave enough to ask.

“you’re real good at changing the mood,” he says slowly.

“I’m not, actually. You’re the one who’s good at that. I’m just good at knowing when it needs to change,” you sigh, the last of your tension leaving you.

At least some of your relationship dynamics haven’t skewed, and it’s good to know they can be relied upon. You both smile at the same time when you consider that some other things can be relied upon too, and wiggle forward into each others’ arms eagerly. You give him a big squeeze that makes him grunt dramatically, and then you heave a massive sigh and stare into his sockets.

“Even when we have to talk about stuff like that, it’s still less stressful than talking to other people for me half the time,” you admit sincerely.

“dunno why, but i’m glad.” His face softens further. “i like the way you look at me,” he offers.

“How do I look at you?”

“like you love me,” he says simply, but his eyes expand slightly in their sockets.

“Well, that makes sense, because I do,” you smile, a little bemused.

“nah, s’like….on purpose.”

You don’t know what that means or how to respond….well, you do respond, just not with words. Instead, you start giving his face the little kisses you know he likes, and he starts sliding his fingers up your shirt the way he knows you like. Stiffened phalanges rub a little circle between your shoulderblades, and you nudge under his jaw to get at his vertebrae. He sighs appreciatively, and when you kiss your way back up his jaw and onto his teeth he parts them slightly, surprising you. He hasn’t done that since...oh. The blood rushes to your face when you remember what you’d said last night after your handful of pills. Asking him if the inside of his mouth feels _private_. Yeesh. Then your breathing deepens, because despite your embarrassment, this still very much does it for you.

“go ahead,” he whispers. “i like it, too.”

_Oh._

You stroke the backs of your fingers along his face as you push your lips and tongue at the gap in his teeth, and you make a tiny noise and a shiver as he holds your lower lip between them for a moment. He lets go and the gap widens; you curl your tongue into the unknowable space in his mouth, exhale softly in delight.

His arms tighten on you for a moment, then his hands slide up to cup your face. Holds it steady, then repeats his gentle hold-and-release on your upper and lower lips experimentally. It’s a damn fine experiment according to you. Then he coaxes you back onto the pillow, rubs his face into your neck the way you like. You interrupt your own deep, satisfied sigh with a close-lipped squeak when he repeats his tiny nip, this time on your neck.

“you like that?” he whispers roughly, and the texture in his voice pulls a surprisingly deep shudder out of you.

“Apparently,” you reply weakly, then moan when he takes another little bit of skin between his teeth, squeezes. Gooseflesh ripples across your chest and arms, and you pull him into you. You let your hands roam each others’ bodies as he continues to rub his face into your neck and chest, alternating with his careful, patient nips until you’re both breathing heavy, sending delicious little shivers into each other. After a few minutes, you notice one of his hands leaves your body; you don’t think much of it until he gets still.

“You okay?” you whisper, switch to rubbing his shoulderblade with the inside of your wrist, but he reaches back to retrieve your hand with his. “yeah, i’m... i’m _good_ ,” he clarifies, shuts his sockets. “you remember some a the stuff we talked about earlier this summer, right? even though i...wondered if we should wait. you told me to...figure things out?”

You think for a second, wonder what would be relevant in your current circumstances, and….oh.

You do remember.

“ _i already am,” Sans whispers in your ear, the loud crackle of the bonfire on the beach keeping you from being overheard. “m’ just gonna ignore it for now, though, k?”_

“ _Wow, really?” He nods almost shyly._

“ _We should talk about it, shouldn’t we? We said we were going to.”_

“ _let’s wait til your thing’s, uh...over.”_

“ _I don’t really know when that will be for you, though.”_

_He sighs, eye lights visible even though the fire should be lighting the inside of his sockets. It doesn’t of course._

“ _i never know when this is gonna happen, either.”_

_You frown in thought, glance over at him._

“ _There’s really no reason you couldn’t just go off on your own right now and figure some stuff out.” You can’t tell if he’s blushing or not in this light, but he looks pretty surprised by that suggestion._

“ _what if it just goes away without you there?”_

“ _Then you’ll know that’s what happens._ _And you don’t ever have to tell me. It’s not actually any of my business.”_

...Oh. Wow.

Sans twines his fingers with yours, then pulls your forearm up to lay it across his sockets with a sigh.

“turns out i got something for ya, if you want it,” he says quietly, then takes your other hand, too. Draws it slowly down his body until it meets the front of his shorts, then presses your palm against something heated and firm. Guides your hand up and down, then retreats until only fingertips rest on the back of your hand.

Well. That’s definitely different from last time.

“not sure if you’re into that sorta thing. s’okay if you’re not,” he whispers.

Your chest feels warm and tight; he sounds calm, but awfully vulnerable.

“I’m not into _things_ ,” you answer, voice heavy with emotion. “I’m into _you_.”

He inhales deeply; his body responds to your words. His fingertips skate out in a reflexive motion you’re used to feeling in your soul rather than traced on the back of your hand. You don’t think it’s conscious, but it gives you a hint as to what he’s feeling. You cup your hand and press a little, a physical echo of what the motion feels like to you.

“Are _you_ into it, though?” you ask hesitantly, even though you can hear his pleased exhale, his slight movement to lean into your touch.

He pulls your arm down an inch or so to peek at you above it; he seems shy but not particularly bothered. Certainly nothing like the first time.

“decided a while back if it happened again, i was just gonna go with it,” he sighs after a minute. “see if you wanted to do anything.” He rubs his face on you, hides his sockets again. You’re a little surprised by his calm, but it seems sincere. His thumb caresses the hand that he’s holding as you explore his magic tentatively with the other, and his legs shift a little as your fingers grow firmer with confidence.

“Does it feel good when I do that?”

He nods against your forearm.

“Can I see it?”

He nods again without looking, and you take your hand away as he hooks his thumb into his waistband, tugs it down without moving otherwise or uncovering his eyes. It’s...wow. Like if a chalk drawing was three dimensional and also somehow...iridescent? It bends reality like the space inside his ribcage; dark but not as much as the inside of his skull. It blocks light and defies shadow. It’s his magic, and it’s just as beautiful and impossible as the rest of him.

“You don’t like looking at it?” you ask quietly.

“not particularly,” he sighs and pulls his waistband back up. “s’different again, though. guess it just kinda does what it wants. not _bad_ , jus’... looks weird to me is all.”

You coax your arm away from his face; he still looks a little meek, but not disturbed or uncomfortable. You smile and pull him towards you, and he ends up on top of you with your encouragement. You can feel his reformed magic between your bodies as you hug him gently, and his face looks a little iridescent too.

“Do you know why it happened this time?” you ask, hoping it’s not the wrong thing to say. But from the way his grin softens, it’s fine.

“nope,” he sighs with a little shrug. “but...i was just thinking about how much i wanted to make you feel good,” he says, sockets flattening at the bottom as he gazes into your eyes. “good as you make me feel all the time. what i was doing on your neck made me think about how much i like when you do that sorta thing to me. didn’t think i _could_ do somethin ta make you feel like that, but....i did.”

A sincere, slightly excited smile softens his grin. “if this is gonna be something that just happens sometimes, guess could be nice...” he glances away but just for a second, “...sharing it, maybe?”

You smile back, holding his skull between your hands and stroking his face with your thumbs, then lift your head to tap his forehead with yours lightly, the way he does to you.

“Yeah,” you reply softly. “That does sound nice. But...what do you think would feel good for you?”

He hums pleasantly while he thinks about it, hand reappearing briefly to stroke your face, tilting your chin so he can press his teeth under and along your neck; you shiver as he gives another tiny nip. You feel him grope down at himself a little more; he really doesn’t seem to have a problem with touching it, but looking is another matter entire. He gazes into your face thoughtfully as he plies it. “guess this’s sorta like... a cock, right?” he muses after a bit.

You shrug.

“I’m no expert on magic, but you probably don’t have to _name_ it if you don’t want to.”

You do your best impression of one of his bastard winks.

“heh. guess not.” He takes a minute to have a pleasant, quiet laugh about that, then looks down at your chin as an iridescent cast seeps onto his frontal bone. “you interested in, uh. touching it?”

“Yeah,” you smile encouragingly. “Let me know how it feels.”

He shifts a little to lean up on one elbow, your thigh fitting easily in the space between his pelvis and ribcage. You lean up too so the angle’s better, and also so he can hide his face in your neck if he wants. He likes to do that anyways, and...yeah, he already is.

“Inside the clothes, or outside?”

“here,” he says, and takes your fingers into his carefully. He guides you down inside his shorts to touch what his magic’s formed itself into for you, oddly heated and thrumming with his peculiarly magnetic resonance. There’s really never any mistaking his body for anything but him, and you love it. His brow creases against your neck as you explore him, and a light layer of shed magic tingles into your fingers pleasantly. It doesn’t feel like anything human, but it’s firm and evocative in a way you’re finding increasingly appealing.

“feels even better when you do it,” he exhales shakily. “not that...” He wiggles up a little to rest his forehead on yours while you touch him, and you decide to lay back instead. You circle your other arm up and over his ribs as he ends up crawling forward onto your body again. “not that it doesn’t feel good when _i_ do it. y’know... i never did before you said i should go off on my own? did a few times after, dunno if you knew. never even occurred to me, but-” he exhales heavily, moves a little in your arms.

“makes it seem like it’s something i’m doing? stead a just something happening to me.”

He guides you over where his magic has changed shape to be around as well as between his bones, even encouraging you to explore where it dips under his pubic bone, dense tension evident even there.

“Did you, um…?”

He glances at you, shakes his head. “jus’ goes away on its own after a while,” he sighs. “sheds out sometimes, or… goes back,” making a sound that might have been a laugh if he wasn’t breathing so deeply.

He shifts to put his legs outside yours, curving up over you like he does when he touches your soul sometimes, although with more tension in his body now. His thin, hard fingers twine with yours inside his clothing as he feels what you do, sometimes guiding, sometimes being guided by you.

He curls your finger around to feel the space inside him, adding a little pressure to show you how the resistance increases as you approach the back of his pubic symphysis. It stops your fingers well short of bone. Even so, you can tell there’s something...looser? about the magic here when it’s like this, as opposed to when it’s packed tight into the joint.

After a long time of delicate stroking and caresses, he uses your fingers and his together to _squeeze_. He gasps, then just keeps pulling in his breath and holds it. His legs press into your sides, tight and shaky. He doesn't breathe as he moves a bit more, pushing into your joined hands. He finally exhales a long, breathy moan that sends a sharp pang of extremely physical desire through your body, coming to rest smoldering between your legs, in your lower belly.

You like this a lot, and he seems to as well. There are a few things you can think of doing with the current circumstances, but… If he doesn’t like _looking_ at it…

“Want to rub it here?” You tilt your hips up suggestively. “Lying down like we are now. We usually like that sort of thing. You could look at me, and I could kiss you, and it might feel good for both of us at the same time. Or is that too much exercise?” He takes your hand out of his pants, wiggles back down a few inches with a sheepish grin, and tries pushing at you with it through both of your clothes. It’s awkward, and you both giggle about it. He puts his legs back between yours and it works a bit better this time. It makes you blush and laugh still, but it’s nice too. Then he presses firmly and grinds a little; you meet each other’s gaze for a long moment and share a speculative, tentatively impressed exhale.

“huh,” he says quietly, looking down at your lips. “doesn’t seem like more work than when i rub my bones on there.”

“You might even...you could put it inside, too. Like you do with your fingers,” you suggest quietly, realizing you actually want that a lot now that you hear your own voice throbbing with it, face flushed and hot.

Wow. He always finds a way to surprise you, and you end up surprising the everloving shit out of yourself, too. The idea’s not one you’d usually find appealing, but… The fact is that there have been all sorts of things you hadn’t really cared for until you’d done them with Sans. He’s sharing something pretty special with you right now, and it makes you want to share yourself, too.

He looks surprised as well, leans up on his elbow and averts his gaze as he rummages thoughtfully around inside his shorts with his left hand. A crease appears between his sockets.

“that might work with this, but...you _sure_?” He glances at your face surreptitiously. “s’kinda fat.” His expression turns a little sheepish. “like me, i guess. heh...”

He’s got a point.

“I can’t say it hasn’t... been a while,” you confess, face getting even hotter. “Like...years,” you whisper, clear your throat. “It might not work.”

“well, not ta bring up boats again, but...guess we’re in the same one,” he quips weakly, but it still makes you laugh, still cools your face a bit. You take his face in your hands and give him a smile, sigh out the tension.

“We can forget about it and do something else if we get another idea, or we can try it if we feel like it. Anything we don’t like, we’ll stop,” you point out, and hug him to your chest to get him to nuzzle you some more. It makes you smile, then gasp as he rubs you through your clothes again. He’s holding himself in his hand over his shorts this time, the slick fabric sliding easily on both of you as he rubs back and forth, up and down. You really like that.

“okay,” he sighs shakily; you can tell he feels similarly. “that’s...wow.” He leans up to look into your eyes. “you really wanna try it?”

“Yeah, I do.” You can hear the tense, heated desire in your voice again. “If you want to.”

He leans up to give you a slow, soft smile.

“yeah,” he sighs calmly. “yeah, okay.”

He kneels up and pulls his shirt off, affording you a good look at the tent in the front of his shorts. It _is_ a little weird to see that on him, just because you’re so used to the way he looks the rest of the time. He doesn’t seem weak or off-balance in the hips; you don’t ask him about that since you don’t want to make him any more self-conscious than he already is. But it’s still why you don’t suggest you getting on top of him just in case that’s an issue. Besides, it’s probably better if he feels more in control of at least some of what his body’s doing.

He tosses his shirt off the side of the bed casually, then reaches down for yours to pull it off too. You sit up to allow it, then lay back down as he reaches for the waist of your sweatpants immediately. His face looks a little more intense than it usually does, and you feel a little pang of nervous excitement as he leans back down over you, hands roaming your body almost possessively.

“Just a second,” you whisper, and his eye lights flicker as he pauses. You flop sideways with a grin, grabbing the comforter from where it’s been shoved away and pull it over both of you, all the way up to his neck. You gaze down inside the darkened interior you’ve created, then grin up at him impishly.

“What happens under the blanket, stays under the blanket.”

He glances down at you with amusement, then his face softens. “love you,” he says quietly, and you feel a puff of warm displaced air in your face as he drops down to his elbows, pressing his smooth, bare ribcage against your hot skin fervently. You wrap your arms around him and pull him up a little, feeling his breath on your ear and neck. His hard, tepid bones press down onto your body, and you can feel what’s heatedly going on with his pelvis through the shorts he’s kept on for his own emotional comfort.

You shudder as his clever fingers roam you boldly, petting and squeezing at just the right spots to get you going. By the time his fingertips find the folds between your legs, they’re already wet and his phalanges have warmed up on you.

“’m gonna get you ready first, okay?”

You nod; his other hand slides up to cradle the nape of your neck as he wiggles down a little. His thumb flicks at the hard nub of flesh at the top of your slit, the knuckles of curled fingers teasing lightly underneath, almost like a slang gesture for ‘money’. You inhale sharply, pushing your head back into the pillow while he traces your clavicle with his nasal bone. When you start arching up to meet him, his hand changes position so two thin phalanges can slide down to your entrance, coax you open. Your arms around him urge him closer, pull him up as you push your face toward his bare neck. His breathing deepens noticeably as you tongue at his vertebrae, and his fingers spread out to support your head. You’re so excited you’re already feeling tension build in your body, encouraged by his idly flicking thumb.

“you wanna come before we try it?” he asks quietly, sliding a third finger inside you. “might ease it up.”

“No... no, I’m...” You whisper into complex bone and permeable magic, sigh your breath out as he pushes deep, curving his fingers apart on the way out. “Sans, are you _really_ okay with this?” You stroke along one of the grooves under his eye socket with your thumb gently.

He meets your eyes and nods. “just wanna make sure i don’t hurt you or anything. think you had the right idea, though. i can see you this way.” His sockets narrow, and he rubs his face down into your neck, making you groan and shiver. “i can tell you want it. s’ doing something to me.” He huffs softly, humming into you as the sounds of his fingers in you get softer, wetter.

“talking with you, feelin lazy together. that does something to me too,” he rambles, his breath getting warmer on your skin. “thinkin’ about the way you look at stuff. watching you decide what’s important, what’s not.”

You moan helplessly under his delicately skillful touch, under the soft torrent of words washing over you.

“makes me...hmm. makes me think about every time you look at _me_. s’like i can see you...thinking.” Your eyes slip shut while he pleasures you, and he pushes his reconfigured magic against the outside of your thigh under the blanket, hot and hesitant through the slick material of his shorts. “every time, thinking i’m important to you. like i’m... ’s like you decide you love me all over again. s’what i meant before. you got any idea how good it feels?” he sighs passionately, and you thrill at the harmonic tones in his voice. You peek up at him, and his smile’s soft. “jus’ wanna give you everything i got. make _you_ feel like that.”

He pulls his fingers out, keeps his eye lights on your face while he fiddles his shorts down and off at last.

“all good?” he breathes, the points in his sockets quivering with intensity.

“Better than good,” you whisper hungrily.

“me too,” he replies, then leans down to trace your face with his nasal bone, gentle and patient. His hand comes down between your bodies, and he leans up to look at your face as he touches his magic to your wet slit. You gasp a little, and his sockets change shape as he watches you, rubbing himself up and down until you’re both soaked with each other.

“that okay?” he whispers shakily, and you hum an affirmative as his fingertip teases your wet folds apart again. “let me know,” he breathes, and he pushes at you just a little, hot and blunt along with the simultaneously drawing sensation his magic causes when it’s inside his body, still part of him. You can feel the tingle of his magic overflowing too, and all together it’s a _lot_ ; you can’t stop your sharp inhale as you jump back a little.

“I’m okay,” you whisper immediately, and he just nods. He watches your face carefully and keeps his hand where it is, holding himself to rub across this time. He straightens his other arm to lean up on his hand, slowly slides to his knees, then sits back almost on his heels before leaning over you again. He still doesn’t look down at what his body’s doing as the blanket falls to his waist, but you suppose he doesn’t need to. You do, and you can see he’s applying downward pressure with his thumb to line up with your entrance.

“just a little bit, okay?” he suggests shakily, cheek almost touching his shoulder as he tilts his head to look down at you (just you), humerus pushed up by the way he’s supporting himself on the heel of that hand. You nod, reach up to touch his face with your fingers, glide them down his arm. You inhale unevenly as he rubs you again for a long full minute; he pushes down and forward before easing back carefully; a suggestion more than penetration.

A thin line of darkness appears between his teeth; his sockets grow pained as he uses his body like a tool to convince yours to open, questioning and retreating to rub against you outside. The tiny bone at the tip of his finger touches your heated flesh so delicately, nudging you apart to finally push his blunt heat in an inch or two, it makes your eyes prickle. He keeps at it, manages a bit more each time. The breathy groan you hear is yours, but it’s his face that an expression of poignant yearning flows onto as he stares into your eyes.

“feels tight, huh?” he whispers, breath huffing in a little when you flutter. It’s soft and filled with wonder, but still a rhetorical question. He can see it on your face. “i… i like that kinda feeling,” he continues, slightly dazed. “in the little spaces. _you_ like it, though?” That one isn’t rhetorical.

You can feel the tension in the skin under your eyes as you nod. It’s actually kind of difficult to stay still. You’re lifting your hips up to meet him now, and you’re digging your fingers into the pillow beside your head so you don’t grab at him or anything.

“you want the rest?” The look on his face is really doing something for you, and your eyes water with an emotion you can’t name as you nod fervently.

“oh...” he murmurs quietly, awed as bends down towards you without pulling back this time, slides his knees back until he’s lying on your body again. “so...this. uh. turns out you make this feel real good for me, okay?” he says almost nervously as you bring your legs in around him, testing for a spot you can rest them.

“’s like-” he cuts himself off as he inhales sharply. You arch as he slides in a little more, but he pulls back out instead. He cants his hips forward to slide up against you on the outside, pushes back and forth there for a minute as you both breathe heavily. His magic doesn’t create friction the same way human skin does, and you’re both so wet it doesn’t chafe. “feels like you’re holdin’ me so tight that i, um...” His sockets are only inches away now, the texture of the points floating there changing as he shifts, making minute adjustments in the way he leans, his thin fingers gripping, massaging the soft fat of your hip firmly. “’m not gonna get carried away, i just don’t know...if what feels good for me, feels good for you?” he adds a little breathlessly, his other hand coming up to stroke the backs of his fingers along your cheek gently.

Your eyelids flutter; you feel a warm glow because you’re noticing he gets talkative in bed when his soul’s not being touched. Turns out that’s just how he is when he feels comfortable, and it makes you feel even closer to him.

“I’ll let you know,” you promise, and you can hear the way your voice throbs with desire. You’re touching his face too, then you glide over his zygomatic process to press at his parietal bone with fingertips. “You _always_ make me feel good,” you add, low and husky, and his face tests the limits of its own flexibility.

“ _stars_ _above_ ,” he hisses under his breath, sockets closing with anticipation for a long moment before he opens them again. The points coalesce inside to roam your face searchingly as his hand comes back down between you to guide him. He penetrates you more easily this time, tries to go slow, but you can’t help the way your spine arches. You curse apologetically as your hips lift; he fills you completely and then a little more, but he eases back despite your insistent movements.

“Sorry,” you breathe. He shakes his head to dismiss your apology silently, still gazing at you through narrow sockets. He nudges forward, testing the limits, realizing...it fits, sort of. Enough that you’re both willing to keep at it; if you tilt back far enough, you can rub the outside on his bones. That’s a pretty good compromise.

He just stays like that, touching your face lightly with hard, smooth fingertips while you shut your eyes, try to find the smoldering, patient desire in yourself that he brings out if you let it happen. You feel his smooth forehead touch yours lightly, and he moves a little, just a tiny rocking motion that makes you hyperaware of just how full you feel. He gasps softly when you clench down on him.

“you good?” he asks again, and you open your eyes into darkness, two points to guide and ground you. “i just...” he whispers hesitantly. “i never touched your soul when i was doing anything inside you, like now,” he adds, somewhere between neutral and conversational. “jus’ realized. dunno why i didn’t...” He trails off, and you bring your arms up to rub his shoulderblades with the insides of your wrists, taking a deep breath for control, try to relax.

“Do you want to wait? It’s okay, or if you’d rather-” He dips down into your neck, and you cut yourself off with a soft moan as he rubs his face there.

“i can tell you like it,” he whispers into you roughly. “i’m good for now.”

His fingers run down your body, spread out to grasp the soft bulk of your hip. His knee slides back, and you feel the elbow he’s supporting himself on slide forward, forearm under your shoulder, feel his bone fingers slide smoothly under your nape. He raises his head, looks into your eyes. Holds you steady, rocks his hips gently again. The pips in his sockets expand and dim as he watches what it does to _you_ , experiences the sensation of your body embracing him, responding to what he does.

“feels real good when you do that.”

“Same here,” you moan softly, closing your eyes against the urge to hide your heated face. “It’s already good, I just… _love you_ ,” you finish in a whisper.

“love you too.” He makes a plaintive noise, his hands tightening on you a moment; he finds room to slide in just a little more. The sound in your throat reminds you of the soft, coughing noises he makes when you find his smallest spaces with your fingers, your tongue. Apparently soul touching isn’t the only way to gain insight. Hoo boy.

“okay... okay,” he whispers soothingly, and you’re not sure if it’s directed at you or himself as he starts to grind on you gently. You’re doing your best not to yank at him, but you can’t stop your arms and legs from hugging him into you, pulling him closer.

“yeah...” he encourages quietly. “feels better when you hold me,” and you feel something tense in your chest; you inhale against his vertebrae as you pull him against you, arch your back to feel his magic-softened pubis against your clit. Your held breath pushes out in a low, hungry sob as he grinds his hips in a tight circle. You run your hands down the back of his ribcage, avoiding the spaces there for now and crossing them over and up, finding a place to rest on his shoulderblades as you pull him into you.

The bones of his hips are unyielding between your thighs, and you squeeze them just to feel the way there’s no give; stroke his scapulae to savor how smooth and hard they are. Your heart pounds up high with excitement you can practically taste, and you feel a keen stretch below where he penetrates your body with his. The sounds you make together are deceptively soft; his multiple sensations at once feel incredibly intense as he waggles slowly rather than pushing, pleasuring you with yet another part of his body. It’s like the way he uses his fingers inside you and presses with his wrist, but softer this way, and so much more...full. He tingles into you the way only he can, but warm and firm and it’s amazing and you love this. You groan shakily and shove yourself up to test it, hear his gasp as you can’t help but tilt your hips back sharply to create friction.

“Is that okay?” you pant. “I-” you groan again, lids fluttering as he jabs forward a little to mimic your motion. He tilts his face up to check as his eye lights flicker, contract and expand as he focuses on his sensations, your responses.

He pants as he thrusts shallowly, then again and watches carefully as you moan, feels you squeezing him inside you. His fingers tighten on the back of your neck, then stroke it encouragingly.

“that feels real good for me,” he breathes, sockets narrowing as you move too, twist a little. You squeeze his pelvis between your thighs, watch his face as you move again to meet him. He pants heavily, looking surprised.

“oh my god... can i fuck you? like-” he pushes in a little sharply. Not all the way; shallow but quick. “is that really… you like it?” He pulls back a little more this time as you nod frantically, one of your hands leaving him to sign “yes, please, _yes_ ,” because this is leaving you a little breathless.

Your hands come up to his face, thumbs stroking under his sockets. He bows his head to your gentle pressure, exhales plaintively as you draw him down to be kissed. Moans and grinds as your hot tongue finds his jaw, starts to push back and forth hesitantly when you use your arms around his ribcage to pull him in. You lift and close your legs a little more, then make a low, guttural sound; shifting that small amount makes the fit inadvisably narrow, but now he’s rubbing your sweet spot every time he moves. His hand comes around to touch where he stretches you. He nudges you open just a little more with delicate fingertips, easing you both as he tries pulling out almost all the way to readjust. He makes a tiny, surprised noise as he enters quickly on your renewed slickness, his head dipping almost to your collarbone; you hear the throaty noise you make almost drown it out.

“you like that?” he huffs, sockets almost closed, the points in them dim and wide. The bones of his face are luminous with iridescence, and you see a faint crease start to appear between his eye sockets as your hips meet him and keep going, encourage him to lengthen his stride.

You swear softly, squeezing your eyes shut as he finds a tentative gliding rhythm, hold your own breath to better hear his quiet exhales of amazement. You bring your knees up even more to get stimulation where you need it, magic tingling as it spills. Yes, this feels loud and a _lot_ and very, very intense, like human types of sex generally do. But doesn’t feel the _same_ , and you’ve never done something like this feeling the way you do now. When your eyelids flutter open, you can see it’s the same for him...he’s never felt like he does right now, here with you.

“I’m gonna come,” you inform him breathlessly after a surprisingly short amount of time, fueled by his soft utterances, his gently repetitive touches that ease this for both of you. His sockets widen, and he nods emphatically. “Just...keep going like that...” you add, since he looks like he’s not sure. He nods again, and your eyes slip shut even though you really love the way you can see the space between his teeth, the entranced look on his beautiful, monstrous face. Feeling like this and seeing him at the same time is almost too much, you inhale so deep that your lungs might burst and you hold it because you’re so open for him, it’s….

His strangled grunt as the first wave hits you tightens your arms almost automatically, and rather than resisting he eagerly presses against you. Your legs shake as they come out from between your bodies and try to straighten; you clench hard inside, trying to squeeze shut. The magic he’s got stuffed inside you intensifies the sensation, pushing you open and enhancing the pleasure of the rhythmic resistance that tears through you.

You can feel the resonance of his body and soul against your chest, something that makes you even more aware that _he’s_ making you feel this way. You’re not really sure how that’s possible but you’re not about to complain as you finally let out your held breath in a long, throaty wail. You get even wetter, blending with the tingle of his magic as you’re filled over and over with the hard echo of his thrumming body.

As your climax ebbs, you do your best to open your eyes as you hum shakily, reflexively stroking his shoulderblade to soothe you both. He slows to look carefully into your face; the expression on his seems to be equal parts dumbfounded and ecstatic.

“You good?” you pant weakly, wiping at the sweat on your brow before it falls in your eyes. He nods, and you take a few deep breaths as he stops to rest, caressing his bones adoringly. You swallow a few times before you try talking again. “If you keep going that’s probably going to happen again, just so you know. It’s okay if you’re done for now, too.”

“you want to go again?” he asks, staring at you like the answer’s the most important thing he’ll ever hear, and his smooth fingertips come up to brush your face hesitantly, then with increasing confidence as you open your legs wide, then use them pull him back in towards you.

“Yep,” you gasp as he resumes. “If you’re up for it.” He’s exerting himself a little more than usual, but he’s still mostly reclined on your body, still looking into your face, your eyes. The points in his sockets are huge, brighter now than they’d usually be at that particular diameter.

“remember when i wanted you to fuck me?” he whispers, bringing his face even closer as he fills you again, slow and easy. You make a tiny noise, nod and lift your own hands up to cup his face, caress his skull as a deep crease forms between his sockets. You remember; he wanted it quick and hard. “don’t wanna hurt you, but you look how i felt,” he continues, thumb brushing across your lower lip. He groans when your tongue darts out to taste it, again when you draw it between your lips, into your mouth. “you want me like that?”

You leave one hand on his face, use the other to take his thumb out of your mouth after a moment. “This isn’t hurting me, Sans,” you whisper emphatically. “You can fuck me hard. It’s just going to make me come sooner, that’s all.”

“you didn’t hurt me either,” he confesses, his breath going to pieces, ragged and harsh as he starts to make good on your suggestion. You’re sensitive since you’ve already come, and what he’s got inside you is leaking magic like a sieve now. The same way it pours out of the joint there sometimes when you touch his bones, when you kiss hot and soft the way he likes. The way his beautiful, impossible body spills over when he loves you as hard as he can. He tries a few long, slick movements, pushing in more as his sockets widen. He scrambles up to kneel wide and low.

“you… o _hhh._ ” He pulls your leg up to his chest, then bucks forward into you sudden enough to make you throw your head back and shout. All you manage is a hiccup the second time; the third leaves you in openmouthed, ecstatic silence while he convinces the deepest parts of you to clench, then stretch for him.

“you don’t hurt me,” he grunts, pulling your leg over his shoulder as he finds an angle to delve even deeper; he doesn’t hurt you either. He’d been right apparently, climaxing _does_ ease it. “just feels so good it scares the shit outta me,” he adds in a shaky whisper. Your body coils and tenses at this delicious intrusion, flutters and loosens to encourage it, makes room for him as he drives into you, each time perfectly shy of too much.

He pulls back slow and steady despite the way your body tries to hold him, and the next sharp thrust finally lets him in all the way, pelvic bones pressed right up against you. He makes a tiny, half-choked noise as he moves his hips in a tight circle, drawing out the moment. He hugs your leg to his ribs as his sockets close; presses his hot teeth to your knee, parts them to hold a tiny bit of your skin between his teeth delicately for just a moment. You shudder and wail at the contrast of his tiny nip with how incredibly full and simultaneously wide open you feel.

“oh my _god_ ,” he sobs, then opens his sockets and leans forward into you heavily as he draws back, folding you up so he can touch his forehead to yours. It sharpens the angle of his entry as he slides meticulously in, just keeps on going until his bones touch you and oh my goodness, _that’s_ the spot now, isn’t it? Right _there_ , and he’s not letting up on it now that he’s seen what it does to you. His breath draws deep and rough now, slow-shuddering in and out with his movements as he stares into your eyes. The stars inside him diffuse into galaxies as he pulls back even further to give you more; there’s a subtle twist of his hips as he questions, then enjoys your newfound depths.

“ohhh. _that’s_ it...” His calm voice belies the pained shape of his sockets, close to agony.

“you feel it? that’s _me_...” A heavy, shifting lurch to reach down and grab your ass, then he’s holding you steady while he gives you everything quick and hard, exactly where you want him the most. “yeah… s’everything, now,” he confirms with a touch of wonder in his soft voice. “you got it all. it’s _me_ in there...” He looks transfixed as his dazed whisper cuts through your short, sharp cries. “i can feel you, too. real hot and soft inside.” He sounds utterly entranced as he describes how you feel to him, like he needs you to know. “holdin me tight, like you don’t wanna let go. i don’t want you to, either.” His bones impact you softly as he moves with increasing abandon, and he lets out a soft, breathy moan.

“did….did you know it was gonna make me feel like this?” His whisper goes raggedly astonished, disorganized words falling out like his heated breath over your lips. “that why y-you let me... you _want_ me to? …. feels like when i’m… oh, _fuck..._ ”

He continues to babble sweet nonsense, half-sentences, and what might be your name until it slowly tumbles apart into a wordless, exquisite coo of pleasure. Magic overflows from his sockets; it gets in your eyes, makes everything strange and beautiful and far too real. You love it. He pushes forward even further, your leg bent outwards now and hooked in his elbow so he can put his face next to your ear. You rub your cheek against his furiously as he fills you blunt and deep. He’s all you feel, all you can hear as you turn away suddenly to suck his bones into your mouth, set your teeth against him lightly as he holds just steady enough to allow it. You taste him there, you’re so _full_ of him. It’s-

“this is gonna make me come,” he confesses in shaky surprise, hot breath tickling into your ear, your neck. “but ’m a lil scared, okay?” His voice breaks apart, then knits itself back into a ragged whisper. “can i keep going? do it with you?” You moan assent as he pulls away from your mouth, and he lets your leg slip away to rest above his pelvis lightly. The smooth bones of his hand, then both his arms slide all the way underneath you, tightening until he’s holding on for dear life. He shifts to put his frontal bone to your forehead again. You wrap arms and legs around him in turn, pull him tight against you; his magic-softened bones impact you hard enough to make you aware of your own bones inside.

“that doesn’t hurt?” he pants urgently, and you shake your head furiously against him. “me neither,” he moans. “you gonna come for me too? _please_... i jus’-” His sockets are pinched shut with a deep furrow between them.

“holy _shit,_ this feels good,” he gasps harshly. He’s trembling with indescribable tension, so afraid to let it go. You can feel it in him everywhere from his shuddering inhalation, shaking through his femurs and spine, tight throughout except where he’s fucking you rough and loose, giving in to what you both want so very badly.

His trembling, plaintive hum as he presses his forehead again gets you right to the edge. “you okay?” he manages, clinging to you desperately.

“I’m _so close_ ,” you manage to grit out as you return his embrace. “Just let it happen.”

“don’t let me go,” he groans, sockets shut tight. As soon as your heated promise leaves your lips, you’re _there_. You’re there, and he _feels_ it. He grapples mindless and gentle against you, turning you both over slightly on your sides. His iliac crest digs into your leg and you don’t really care; you hang on tight. The sound of him penetrating your body becomes impossibly wetter for a second before your low, guttural cry drowns it out; you flood out over him uncontrollably. He curls in to clutch at you, the space between his teeth catching your lip momentarily as he spasms in futile resistance to what’s happening in him. His wordless voice slides out quiet under yours as he shoves you insistently all the way through the mind-scouring flood of your second orgasm and onto the edge of his first.

And it’s _all_ his; both of your souls are still inside you as he shoves his body into yours as deep as he can. His hand shoots down to your hip suddenly and thin, pointed bone digs in as he grips you. You lean into it; you don’t let him go. When he surrenders at last he’s never held _you_ so tight, his other arm hooked around the back of your neck to keep your face pressed against his.

An abrupt gasp, then a soft, breathy growl shudders out of him in waves; he glides a slow, wet stutter inside you as the tension unravels from his thrumming bones. It feels like it takes a long time, pleasure shoving all the air out of him patiently until there’s nothing left but a dry cough. He sucks in a hitching breath, hilts hard inside you one last time with a heartrendingly soft moan. His sockets finally open, hands uncurling to soothe your neck and hip with fingertips as his eye lights come back into existence hesitantly, fuzzy and wide.

You stare at each other, breathing heavily.

To your surprise he finally looks down at where his body penetrates yours, his thumb coming to rest just beside it. The points in his sockets contract as he spreads you open to ease out slickly, flicker at the soft, tight noise of satisfaction you make while he does. Gaze bewildered, his eyes focus on what he rests against your slightly sore, magic-soaked cleft. He brushes the tip with his thumb, jumps a little with a tiny noise of surprise.

When he tilts his wrecked face up at you, you reach up to touch the space between his teeth, press in to feel their sharp edge. A bead of magic wells at the corner of his socket, slides into the groove below it. You pull away from the secret, unknowable space inside his mouth to trace his tear’s worn path; you wipe it away but it’s already reforming. His body curves in toward yours as he begins to weep in earnest. A little bit of his magic decides to overflow and melt down your leg while the rest coils lazily back in on itself over time. You rub the side of his skull with your forearm soothingly.

“Are you okay?” you ask quietly, throat tight as your press your own teary eyelid to his still-warm parietal bone. You feel his nod as he squirms further into your embrace, making only the soft, dry noise that isn’t a sniffle. He does this sometimes, usually when he enjoys himself more than he expected to. You obligingly pull the thigh he’s laying on up into the space between his ribcage and pelvis, then the other one on top, pushing into his body to squeeze his spine with your soft heat. You feel a bone fingertip tap your shoulderblade twice, then trace a question.

“I’m _really_ good,” you answer thickly. “I’m good.” You continue rubbing his skull with the inside of your arm, then press it with fingertips the way he likes while he sheds the excess emotional residue of fear, pleasure, vulnerability, and whatever physiological events that might have occurred as a result of what you’d just shared.

After just a few minutes he shudders out the last of it, exhales and relaxes the rest of the way.

“that was so weird,” he says weakly into the private space between your bodies, then moves his head back so he can look at you. “how’d you make it feel good?” he asks, softly baffled. As far as you can tell he’s entirely sincere. He really _hadn’t_ expected to enjoy that very much, definitely not the way he obviously had. You blink at him, and your mouth opens but nothing comes out. You’re not really sure how to respond. You dismiss the urge to quip about how he’d been the one to do most of the work for a change, and opt for honesty.

“So...” you begin hesitantly, then your voice firms. “I never actually got off on that before,” you confess, glancing to the side a little. “Didn’t really...like it. Ever. I guess I could ask you the same.”

“huh,” he replies, staring at your chin thoughtfully. “me either.”

“Was it in the category of ‘uncomfortable’, or ‘too much like work’?” you ask, smiling and thumbing sweat out of your eyebrow.

“one of each,” he sighs. “jus’ ignored it after that, an it didn’t happen anymore.”

“Third time’s the charm, I guess,” you joke gently, and are rewarded with a dry snort. “Is that the sort of thing you’d want to do again?” He smiles, shuts his sockets and rubs his face on the hot skin of your arm, seeking closeness and warmth.

“hmm. dunno if that’ll show up again, but if it does... maybe? have to be in the mood for it, but… even coming felt good. didn’t expect that.”

He opens his sockets again, peeps over at you half-shy, half-challenging.

His mixed feelings about orgasms make an odd sort of sense to you, even if you personally like them quite a bit. You know what he meant when he described them as ‘sharp’ sometimes, or painful. “Yours feel different from mine, don’t they?”

His eye lights flicker a little as he meets your gaze. “well...yeah. but yours feel different too, right?”

You think about that. “I guess so. Depending on what I’m doing.” You give him a slow smile. “Maybe we could try and find out sometime.”

“heh.” His sockets narrow lazily. “maybe, yeah. but i think tryin anything else new on top a what we were already doing there mighta dusted me on the spot. might have to ease into it.”

“I got that impression, so I didn’t suggest it.”

“why’d you do it before, if you didn’t like it?” he asks, surprising the shit out of you yet again since he almost never asks you stuff like that.

“Hmm,” you say softly. “Curiosity, boredom….one time I needed a place to stay and didn’t want to ask my bitch cousin for the fifth time. Needed rent a few times, or just lonely. That’s the way a lot of men are set up, and to be honest, men are the easiest. Go outside and walk a block, you can find one willing.”

His sockets go flat on the bottom with amusement, and he snorts dryly. “wasn’t gonna say anything, but i kinda noticed that myself.”

You press your foreheads together and have a good long giggle at that.

“Did you mostly go with men back then?” you ask after a second, leaning your head back into the pillow and idly stroking the femur he throws up over your hip.

“don’t have a preference, and s’not like i can afford to be choosy.” He gestures at himself with a self-deprecating smirk. “so it was like you said sometimes, though not always.”

You frown back. “Umm, yeah you can. Honestly, you could have been charging them for the privilege,” you insist as he snorts again. “I’m serious!” you protest, grinning hypocritically. “I couldn’t walk a _million_ blocks and find someone like _you_.”

He’s giggling, but you can tell he’s actually a bit flattered by the iridescence under his sockets. “never needed money. i always got the stand, n my tab at grillbz’s.”

“You and your fucking ‘dogs,” you snort, and his discomfiture seems a bit overdone until you remember something Alphys had said on a day you hadn’t died. _Handsy Sansy, Dogfucker of Snowdin._

“dogs, not Dogs,” you specify, but oops, that just made it worse. Apparently there _had_ been a grain of truth in there somewhere. Yeesh. “how the hell do you always have so many anyhow?” You try to steer the conversation away from something that embarrasses him, without considering you’d yet again asked him something he’s definitely not allowed to tell you.

“Shit, I’m-”

“you know, I been thinkin’,” he interrupts your apology, looking unaccustomedly sober. “lotta stuff i’m not supposed to tell you, reason i don’t is because i don’t want it to come down on you. not that you’d do it on purpose. just the wrong word at the wrong time, and the whole thing falls apart like a house a cards.”

He’s looking at the ceiling, still caressing the nape of your neck tenderly. “s’like, all these rules happen from us trying to hold on to what we got. but we end up hoarding everything and giving out dribs and drabs s’much as we can to keep from getting stuffed back down in the hole we crawled out of. by now you know why i don’t put as much faith in all that as i could. might not be here tomorrow...might not _be_ a tomorrow.”

You nod slowly, and he turns to look at you with a strange, soft expression on his face.

“the whole table might get flipped, all of us back underground without a penny or a packet a chisps. but lips can’t be loose if you don’t _got_ any.”

His grin turns wicked; a lazy coil of temptation you remember well. “in fact,” he continues gamely, “worrying bout all that doesn’t hold a candle to the lone possibility a seein’ the look on your face when i tell ya: monster food doesn't exist.”

Um.

“yeah. that one right there,” he adds happily, visibly holding back laughter.

You let your annoyed disbelief stay in your expression long after the point you should have accepted you literally _can’t_ wait him out, but eventually you sigh and ask.

“What does that _mean_ , Sans?”

“there isn’t anything that _isn’t_ monster food,” he answers finally, looking like he’s gonna lose it any second. “nothin underground at least. doesn’t taste the same, but a handful a burg and a handful a dirt does you the exact same amount a good,” he squeaks the last word, then gives in to the laughter while you frown thoughtfully.

“heh heh _heh_ ,” he shakes out, wiping tears of hilarity from his scrunched sockets. “there’s nothin in there that wasn’t alive at some point, or used to be, or has the potential to be. half the _rocks_ round tori’s old place are sentient. it’s all magic, all the same down there. even human garbage fallen down turns eventually. been closed up too long not to be anymore, and soon….well. i’ll keep that under the hood for now, but….those dogs? those grow everywhere. it’s jus’ heated up river trash, tasty as hell.”

He rolls back a little with his arm still hooked around you, rubs his opposite wrist over his forehead thoughtfully as he grins at the ceiling. He looks downright nostalgic.

“used to give mk pocket change to go fish em out, didn’t even bother doin’ it myself. still don’t, but...eh. kid liked going over to waterfall to watch for undyne. said they liked her armor, wanted to beat up humans an all that. never kept em outta trouble, but i tried, right? told my brother i did at least,” he smirks. “heh.”

“Everyone underground paid you exorbitant amounts of G for river trash they could have just gone to fish out themselves,” you say slowly. “They _still_ do,” you add in wonder.

“guess i did figure out chargin’ em for the privilege was a good way to go after all,” he snickers, “cause the more it _costs_ , the better they _are_ , right? me n mettaton used to talk about that. you shoulda _seen_ the take after my shows back then.” His voice quivers with suppressed mirth. “an’ that’s even before the two drink minimum... and the _food_. you should ask ‘im what those rectangle steaks he used to sling in that joke hole were made out of.”

“You’re a fucking extortionist,” you accuse, but the tightness of your voice betrays the laughter trying to break out.

Oh, god. His eye lights brighten as he cuts them at you.

“me? nahhh. even got a deal going on right now, y’know. buy five ‘dogs an get a side order of handjob free!” he gushes outrageously, and you finally just tackle him, trying to blow raspberries on his skull.

You win gently, but you still win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interest was expressed, so here it is: my non-diegetic playlist for writing this fic.  
> Ch 1: New Order “Regret”  
> Ch 2: Soundgarden “The Day I Tried To Live”  
> Ch 3: Nina Simone “I Want a Little Sugar In My Bowl”  
> Ch 4: Sharon van Etten “Every Time The Sun Comes Up”  
> Ch 5: The Pretenders “Brass In Pocket”  
> Ch 6: The Cure “Close To Me [Closer Mix]”  
> Ch 7: Pete Yorn “Life on a Chain”  
> Ch 8: New Order “Age of Consent”  
> Ch 9: Radiohead “Go To Sleep”  
> Ch10: Morrissey “Every Day Is Like Sunday”  
> Ch11: Primitive Radio Gods “Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand”  
> Ch12: Shakey Graves “Family and Genus”  
> Ch13: The Smiths “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side”  
> Ch14: Beck “Jackass”  
> Ch15: Fleetwood Mac “Rhiannon”  
> Ch16: The Mountain Goats “Oceanographer’s Choice”  
> Ch17: Pearl Jam “Corduroy”  
> Ch18: Annie Lennox “No More I Love You’s”  
> Ch19: Sam Cooke “You Send Me”  
> Ch20: Radiohead “There There (The Boney King of Nowhere)”  
> Ch21: Low “Murderer”  
> Ch22: Neutral Milk Hotel “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea” & Toad the Wet Sprocket “All I Want”  
> Ch23: Tiffany “I Think We’re Alone Now”  
> Ch24: Smashing Pumpkins “Disarm”  
> Ch25: Radiohead “I Might Be Wrong”  
> Ch26: The Jayhawks “Blue”  
> Ch27: Cibo Matto “Birthday Cake”  
> Ch28: New Order "Blue Monday"  
> Ch29: Tori Amos “Crazy”  
> Ch30: James “Five-O”  
> Ch31: Interpol “C’mere”  
> Ch 32: Modest Mouse “Float On”  
> Ch 33: Catherine Wheel f. Tanya Donelly “Judy Staring At The Sun”  
> Ch 34: FARTTALE  
> Ch 35: that.dog. “Hey Old Timer”


	36. active cultures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Wilco – Theologians](https://youtu.be/-JVrjBKCWgs)

Matt leaves; Angie and the kids go with him.

Two weeks later, they’re back with Mom’s urn.

You’re trying not to push, trying not to pop the fragile bubble of whatever situation might finally be happening to make them stay. You’re hoping she’s starting to understand that she doesn’t _have_ to go back to whatever’s making her not want to be there right now. Angie’s good at finding glib answers to the few questions that are unavoidable, and you’re more than happy to let her fill the silence with whatever she feels like justifies her extensive and repeated presence this summer. It’s making you happy, even when it causes you to feel a little crowded. When that happens, you can always go and stay with Sans-n-Them(TM), as Angie started calling it a while ago.

You finish plucking out the last few notes of the song, and shake your hand out with a tight sigh of pain. Guitar really does take it out of you now, and you know soon you won’t be able to do this at all anymore. It’s more of a loss than you’d like to admit; one of the connections to your mother it’d taken time, dedication, and pain to earn in the first place, and something that you could have passed on to your sister’s kids if either’d been inclined. They aren’t, and you don’t resent them for it. You resent your own body more for stealing this from you, and even this you’re finding reasons to forgive, one at a time. It’s good practice.

“Think that’s about all I can manage,” you sigh, giving Angie a sad smile.

“That was really pretty, Goob. Thanks.”

You glance over at the kids, who’re reading something together on their viewer and having a quiet conversation. They looked up when you finished though, and you know they’ve been listening, paying attention. You think back in your own memories, when your mom was playing and singing in the background. But that’s the funny thing, isn’t it? You don’t remember what you were actively doing at the time anymore, maybe watching a show, fighting with Angie (or getting along), doing chores. But you remember the songs, you can hear them in your mind anytime you want because they were such a ubiquitous part of your life.

Sometimes it’s what’s going on in the background that matters the most, and sticks with you the longest.

“Um. You okay?”

“Yeah,” you laugh at Angie, laugh at yourself. “You know this shit makes me maudlin as hell.”

“Yeah, me too. You want me to fix something to eat?”

“I guess I could go for something.”

“hey.” Sans shuffles unexpectedly around the corner from the kitchen, looking half-asleep as usual. “you want me to make some-?”

“Noooo _ooooo_ ,” the kids moan in absent unison without looking up. He really is a bad cook. At this point they’re used to the fact that he shows up unannounced whenever he feels like it and just joins whatever program’s in progress.

“tough crowd,” he comments, and flops down on the couch next to you with a grunt. You hand the guitar to Angie, and she places it reverently on the stand next to the chair with your mom’s urn in it. Sans nods without really looking; the same respectful gesture most monsters give when they see a memorial object. Then he just sort of slides sideways onto you, making you flinch.

“bad day?” He doesn’t actually move, even though he noticed. He knows by now the damage is already done, so unless you tell him to get off you he might as well stay.

“Yeah, kind of. I was playing, but I think I stiffened up sitting here too long.”

“Oh, um. So.” Ange is looking at you, then you see her eyes dart.

“Yeah?” You try not to sigh visibly, although you know Sans can feel you tense.

“Matt was going to come by tonight, and stay the weekend. Is...that okay?”

“Yeah, it’s fine.” You give a practiced, gentle smile even though you’re a little bothered. You just...sort of miss being alone. Well, alone with Sans, or just regular alone. Being able to walk around in a towel (not that you can’t, it’s just… no), or go down to get a midnight snack naked sometimes since this summer’s been kind of a hot one. “I’ll stay with Sans. Go ahead and have my room, okay?”

“Are you sure, Goob? I know it’s been...” she trails off and you let her.

“It’s fine. I’m serious. You’re just giving me excuses to get out more.”

She looks dubious, but lets it pass. Sans tilts his skull up at you.

“wanna go someplace nice? got some ‘dogs.”

You exhale heavily. “Sure. Wanna grab my meds? And the pillow thing.”

“yeah. gimme a sec.”

“Long day?”

He just makes a noncommittal noise, and you let him.

“I can get your stuff,” Angie offers, and you thank her. At least you and she aren’t fighting anymore, now that you’ve backed off the whole saying exactly what you mean thing. Obviously there’s some really complicated stuff going on in her life, and part of being there for someone is just...being there, instead of trying to push your way into everything, or trying to goad them into doing what you want before they’re ready.

“Hey Sans,” Shonda says, looking up finally from whatever has her and Nattie so transfixed. “Can you get me a monster phone?”

“Shonda-”

Sans’s deep chuckle cuts off your chiding. “gotta be a monster ta have a monster phone, kiddo.”

“Why?”

“cause that’s the rules.”

“Why?”

“dunno. i didn’t make em.”

“Then why does Frisk have a monster phone?”

“Oh my _god_ , Shonda,” you grit, rounding your eyes at her significantly. “Why are you suddenly trying to get phones out of Sans?”

She just looks away and shrugs one shoulder, making the diagonal row of dragonfly barrettes at the ends of her braids clack. The sound’s a lot more soothing than her impending-puberty-fueled attitude, but you exhale slowly and let it go. You’re extra cranky because you’re in pain, and it’s not her fault she’s having Moods. You actually really like Shonda; she’s conscientious, responsible, and a lot of other things that make her too much like you to entirely be able to get along all the time. Your sister even jokes sometimes that something got switched around and she somehow had _your_ kid.

“s’okay to ask,” Sans says mildly, sounding rather amused by the whole thing. “nothin’ wrong with being a go-getter, if that’s how y’are.” His skull grins at her from your lap, sockets narrowing. “answer’s still gonna be the same, though.”

She pouts and returns to the viewer while he laughs softly. Your sister returns with your stuff, and she’s unexpectedly put together a little lunch for you and Sans out of some of the monster food you’ve got around the house. At least by now she knows not to offer him human food, ever since the time he took her proffered cup of coffee and promptly poured it through himself just to see the look on her face. The kids had shrieked with laughter, and at least he’d cleaned it up.

And you have to admit the look on her face _had_ been pretty funny.

***

You watch the dolphins breaching in the distance, picking at the breadlike stuff that Sans has told you is made out of pressed leaves. That’s apparently what the outside of snips’n’snails is made out of; the inside’s bugs, snails, or mayonnaise and construction paper. Sometimes all of that. You can buy the filling already made in a jar; it’s often different colors and textures and the labels are handmade. Reminds you of what Sans had said about that warm milk he’d presented you with so long ago: you pays your money, you takes your chances.

The pillow’s helping, and so will the meds. The view and the company’s nice, too.

“so. what’s been buggin’ you?”

“Other than last Tuesday happening twice and skipping Sunday? I’m just… I don’t know. I miss standing in front of the fridge naked at 3am with a spoon eating olives and jelly straight up out the jar. Shit like that.”

“we can get some olives at my place if you want.”

“Your fridge isn’t even _cold_. It’s just not the same without that cool breeze, at least not in the summer. Besides, I don’t want Frisk and Papyrus to see my snips’n’snails flapping in the breeze I just mentioned.”

“huh. well, frisk’s not an issue cause they sleep like a rock, but paps is kinda modest i guess.”

“And he doesn’t sleep.”

“heh. he sleeps sometimes.”

“Not at night.”

“yeah.”

You sigh, find a weird fruit thing that looks like a ball. Or maybe it’s just a ball, who fucking knows. You eat it. It’s crispy, wet and flavorless in a strangely appealing way. Sort of like jicama, or an apple that tastes like the inside of your mouth.

“I just don’t want to do anything to mess up whatever situation’s happening, because I want her and the kids to move here. I mean...” You look at the remains of your ball, consider throwing it in the ocean, then just finish eating it because the last thing you need to do it strain your shoulder right now. “What...” You really don’t do this sort of thing often, so you run over the phrasing in your mind a few times.

“What do you think?”

“of what?”

“Do you think Angie should move here?”

“dunno.”

You exhale slowly, rummage around for more food. There’s not much left.

“Do you have any sweets?”

“hmm. got a bag a sand, you want that?”

A bag of fucking sand.

“Sure, give it here.”

It’s not bad. It actually kind of hits the spot, or maybe it’s just the meds finally kicking in.

“i dunno if your sister should move here, cause i don’t really understand what her life’s like. all’s i know’s what she talks about, and she doesn’t talk about herself.”

You sigh sadly. He’s got a point.

“i was thinking. maybe you could bring some a your stuff over to my place, jus’ keep it there? might make you feel a lil better bout staying with us so much.”

You turn and look down at Sans, skull propped up on the long pillow from your studio bed you usually bring here in his phone, hands relaxed on his chest and legs akimbo, peering out over the water between his slippered feet.

“What kind of stuff?”

He makes a vague noise, shrugs and stares into the distance peacefully. “stuff you use? more clothes and all that. art thingies and those chairs.” He looks dreamily out over the water, smiling a little now. “we got a couch we all use already, but... yours is better. maybe bring that lotion you like? can probably get a cold fridge for you too, ’s not like we can’t jus’-”

“Are you asking me to move in with you?” Your voice sounds high and weird, and he turns his head to look up at you in mild alarm.

“this is one of those times where i understand what you’re saying, but not what it means,” he says slowly after studying your face for a few long seconds.

“I’m not sure what else it can mean. Are you asking me to come live with you, bring all my stuff and stay?”

“you can bring whatever you want, stay as much as you want to. you worried about something?”

You open and shut your mouth a few times. “The way I’m used to...asking someone to move in together’s kind of a big deal,” you try. “And… don’t you have to discuss it with Frisk and Papyrus?”

“they don’t have a problem with you staying,” he replies, looking increasingly confused. “you know they don’t mind.”

You’re overreacting. Well, no one’s ever asked you to move in together before, but...maybe that’s not what’s happening. Which...well. You don’t know if that’s something you want or not. You haven’t thought about it.

“If I brought over more stuff, where would I put it?”

“wherever you want, s’long as it’s not in someone’s room.”

You frown. “But...you have too much stuff in your room already. And it’s not like _I_ can find anything in there. Where would I even put my clothes?”

Sans looks at you, tilts his skull and sits up with a grunt. “you don’t hafta stay in _my_ room,” he says slowly. “might not be safe all the time anyhow, and…i hate ta break it to ya, but my room counts as someone’s room. why not just stay in yours? since it’s right near the kitchen, you c-”

“Wait a second. What?”

“dunno if you want me to go back or finish,” he says with a weak grin. “maybe i’ll just wait instead.”

He does, and you try to figure out what that means.

“You can make my bedroom at home like your bedroom? Like I could get to it from your house?”

“nope,” he replies, looking confused, then thoughtful. “well, yeah i could. but...i’m talking about your room at me n paps’ place, not the bedroom at your apartment.”

You open your mouth, but nothing comes out.

“think we got a misunderstanding going on,” he says after studying your expression. “why don’t we go there, and then we can talk about it? get on the same page first.”

“okay.”

You’re feeling better enough to help clean up, although you just watch him as he puts the long pillow back in his phone. It’s always interesting to watch the way his fingers just...turn it somehow until it goes flat, then becomes a line, then a point that winks out. It’s less scary than taking a shortcut with your eyes open, but it’s still freaky if you think about it too much.

He extends his bare hand to you; you take it, shut your eyes.

When you open them, Papyrus is sitting at the dining room table. “OH, HELLO,” he says distractedly without looking up from what appears to be a disassembled ship in a bottle, maybe more than one judging by the three enormous bottles set to the side. “I’M UNBOTTLING, SO THE TABLE IS CURRENTLY BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. WOULD YOU LIKE TO MAKE A TABLE APPOINTMENT?”

“nah, i think we’re good for now, bro. jus’ wanted to talk to them about their room, cause we got a misunderstanding.”

Papyrus’s sockets narrow, and he frowns crankily at something he’s holding with the tweezers in his impossibly long, thin phalanges.

“ONLY _QUIET_ HUMAN BEDROOM APPOINTMENTS ARE AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME,” he gripes. “FRISK HAS ALREADY BEEN ADVISED.”

“geez paps,” Sans laughs uncomfortably. “this isn’t… they don’t know where their room is or something.”

Papyrus looks up.

“THEY CAN’T FIND IT? BUT IT’S?? RIGHT THERE???”

“dunno. trying to figure it out,” he smiles gently.

You exhale for patience.

“Can one of you just point to it?”

Papyrus lifts his non-tweezer occupied hand and extends an index phalanx directly behind you. You turn around and look at the door off the living room.

“Wait a second. I haven’t been in there since...” you blink. You look at Sans, then Papyrus. They both look back blankly, even though you can tell they know what you mean. The time you and Frisk had had an argument, and it had wounded your soul and put the brothers down and out for a few days.

“you needed a place to be alone,” Sans adds. “so i put one there.”

You open your mouth, but nothing comes out.

“no one was using it,” he elaborates disturbingly. “you don’t have to either if you don’t want. but it’s got a bathroom now if you decide you want to stay with us sometimes.”

“BUT THEY ALREADY DO,” Papyrus interjects, and you turn around to see him staring at your backs instead of whatever’s in the tweezers he continues to hold aloft.

“i know, paps,” Sans grins patiently. “it’s that thing i said. remember? got a misunderstanding going on, but we can work it out like we usually do.” He points his grin at you. “right?”

“But...that door was already there,” you protest weakly.

“uh huh.”

“Was...it something else before?”

“it was always a door.”

“Where did the door...go?”

“wherever i want?”

“...”

“you okay?”

You sigh, walk over to the couch and plop down. Yeah, the meds are working. Sans shuffles over to join you as you stare at the problematic door.

“Do you know where Frisk is?” you ask after a minute or two.

“THEY WENT TO ENDOGENY’S,” Papyrus barks peevishly from the other room.

You sigh. “That probably wouldn’t help anyway. Frisk’s...not really the best at explaining monster things, since they’re basically a monster.” Sans’s eyes flicker sharply, but you wave your hand before he can protest. “I mean, like. Culturally,” you add, and he settles. “They’re bad at explaining things like this to me because it’s not like they have the greatest grasp on where I’m coming from.”

Sans waits amiably for you to work your way through the issue, toys idly with your fingers and lets his socket list half-shut.

“We spend a lot of time explaining why water is wet to each other, don’t we?”

“heh heh... yup.”

“So. I live at my apartment, and...here?”

“yeah.”

“You live here and at Grillby’s?”

“MORE LIKE AT GRILLBY’S AND HERE,” Papyrus calls.

“somebody order a peanut gallery?” Sans drawls, sockets flat on the bottom.

“SHUT UP.”

“Papyrus lives here, and...in the woods,” You frown thoughtfully.

“I DON’T LIVE IN THE _WOODS_ ,” Papyrus hollers, offended. “WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN TELLING THEM, SANS? YOU MAKE ME SOUND LIKE A SHIFTLESS TEEN PLAYING HOUSEHOLD-IN-THE-WILDERNESS.”

“maybe we should move this convo into the room,” Sans comments, but his expression’s fond.

“The peanut gallery’s actually kind of helping me get more context,” you say slowly. If Papyrus’s roaming is considered an immature behavior, it helps you understand why he might make some monsters uncomfortable, since he’s obviously an adult. “But I guess I can go take a look. It’s different than before?”

“mm? yup. little bigger, got a bathroom. thought of it a while back, just did it at the time n forgot about it.”

“YOU HAVE AN EIDETIC MEMORY, SANS. YOU WERE JUST TOO LAZY TO BRING IT UP.”

Sans shrugs. “you wanna check it out?”

“Yeah, let’s go do that. It’s safe, right?”

Sans puts his hands on his femurs, stands with a grunt. “least as safe as pap’s room.”

Inside the door, the room’s a lot bigger than you remember, and there’s another door in the wall to your left. The chair and lamp are still there, but the rest of it’s empty. You open the bathroom door after glancing back at Sans just to make sure (he nods), and it has all the usual amenities, including a deep, long bathtub that makes your lips quirk into a small smile.

“This is nice. I like it.”

“’m glad. so...you wanna bring some stuff? you don’t have to, like i said.”

You sigh, feeling unaccountably anxious.

“I’ll think about it,” you reply, and turn to smile over your shoulder at him.

You both wander back out and go to peer over at what Papyrus is doing. You open your mouth to speak, but Sans beats you to it.

“hey, bro. can we make a table appointment?

“SHORT NOTICE, BUT I’LL ALLOW IT THIS ONCE.”  
“k. what’s available now?”

“SITTING.”

“uh. anything else?”

“LIMITED SPEECH IS PERMITTED. PERMISSION IS ALSO LIMITED DUE TO THE UNBOTTLING.”

“k. was hoping you could tell them about when undyne used to stay with us. might give em a better idea what we mean, specially cause it didn’t work out.”

You’re gaping again.

“I SUPPOSE,” Papyrus sighs, but he puts the tweezers down with an expression you know is pleased. He gestures to two chairs, and you both sit.

“UNDYNE USED TO STAY WITH US, BUT SHE COULDN’T SLEEP BECAUSE I DON’T AND SANS DECIDED TO PLAY HIS MIDNIGHT SNACK PRANK. SHE STILL CAME TO VISIT OFTEN EVEN THOUGH SNOWDIN IS VERY COLD BECAUSE I AM HER VERY GOOD AND COOL FRIEND, BUT SHE STOPPED GOING IN THE HOUSE BECAUSE OF SANS’S ROOM AND ANNOYING DOG. THAT DIDN’T STOP ANNOYING DOG FROM STAYING WITH HER, HOWEVER.”

You frown.

“Do I know Annoying Dog?”

“NO.”

“O...okay,” you say. “So, um.” You look at Sans, whose half-mast sockets watch his brother pulling apart glued-together matchsticks fondly.

“AFTER THAT, SHE STAYED IN THE BUNNY HOTEL IN SNOWDIN AND FOUND IT MUCH MORE TO HER LIKING. AND SO EVERY TIME SHE CAME TO VISIT SHE SLEPT THERE, AND HER MOOD IMPROVED GREATLY. WELL. UNDYNE REALLY ONLY HAS _ONE_ MOOD, BUT IT WAS IMPROVED.”

Papyrus grins at you with a satisfied nod. You look at Sans, who seems like he’s falling asleep.

“So are you going to translate the moral of that story for me, or…?”

“mm? k. so, basically means it’s… either ya do or ya don’t. s’like…um. you don’t _have_ to, but you _can_.”

You exhale very slowly, and watch Papyrus disassemble more tiny bits of wood. There’s a fuzzy pile of thread near his dark-clad elbow that you think might be a completely unraveled miniature mainsail.

“I think I give up,” you announce.

“mm. you don’t wanna bring any stuff?”

“No, I mean I give up trying to let you two explain these things to me. I’m gonna think about it, okay? That’s my answer.”

Sans takes a breath, and you blurt, “I’ll bring the clothes and lotion now though if that’s okay with you?”

“like, literally now?”

“No, I mean...before tonight. Go home, pack a bag for the weekend.”

“good,” he sighs, settling back. “feel a nap comin on.”

“I WILL DRIVE YOU IN ONE HOUR.”

“Thanks, Papyrus.”

“NAPPING BREAKS THE CONTRACTUAL TERMS OF YOUR APPOINTMENT.”

“oh. well, guess i’ll just have to reschedule, then.”

“Does Sans really have an eidetic memory?” you frown after a second, suddenly replaying one of the peanut gallery’s comments from earlier.

“MORE OR LESS. WHY?”

“Oh. That’s like...cheating, then.”

Sans snorts.

“You really _are_ too smart for your own good,” you frown, considering what you’ve heard about people who remember everything. Every slight, every terrible thing exactly as it happened. That must suck.

“That must suck,” you comment sympathetically, patting him on the shoulder.

“m’used to it,” he grins lazily. He still hasn’t gotten up. Then he glances over, and you do too. Papyrus looks baffled.

“s’what it says when they check me,” he explains with a grin, and Papyrus jumps, drops a piece of something.

“Sorry,” you apologize quickly. “Is it bad to talk about that? Or… inappropriate?”

“nah. jus’ not something people talk about, i guess.”

“Why not?”

“dunno.”

You look at Papyrus.

“Why not?” you repeat.

“WHAT DOES IT SAY WHEN YOU CHECK ME?” he asks instead of answering, and Sans starts giggling.

“Um...” you’re about to say you don’t know, then you realize and/or remember that it’s apparently retroactive. You feel a twinge since you don’t like being reminded of the things you can’t not know anymore, but eventually you answer.

“It’s Your Good and Cool Friend Papyrus, The World’s Tallest Living Skeleton.”

“NYEH HEH HEH HEH...” Papyrus looks extraordinarily pink, in a good way this time. They really don’t talk about this? You’re kind of baffled, because it’s apparently fun. You turn to Sans.

“What does it say when you check Papyrus?”

Sans laughs. “what a weird question.”

“It’s weird? Why?”

“dunno? it’s just...” he shakes his head, but it doesn’t seem like he’s uncomfortable. He rasps his thumb across his forehead thoughtfully.

“it says-” He pulls his bare hands out of his hoodie pockets, and your eyes widen in surprise.

“This is the one who is also part of the Whole you sprung from. He is stronger then you, just as you are stronger than him. You have Sacrificed much for each other; care for him well and you won’t need to.”

You mouth drops open.

“Wait...thats… ‘care for him well and you won’t need to?’ What does that mean?”

“no,” he replies, smiling and shaking his head. “it says-” He lifts his hands, gestures slowly. “Care for him _well_ and you won’t _need_ to.” He giggles and Papyrus sighs, angles his sockets at the ceiling.

You narrow your eyes. “Is that a pun?”

Sans laughs, nods. Then he frowns at his own fingers. “you can’t tell?”

You shake your head, and he frowns at his fingers some more.

“weird.”

“IT’S AN INTEGRAL ERROR IN THE CIPHER,” Papyrus announces unexpectedly. “SEVERAL SYMBOLS ARE REPEATED, AND MUST BE UNDERSTOOD FROM CONTEXT. THE WORDS YOU UNDERSTAND AS ‘WELL’ AND ‘NEED TO’ ARE ACTUALLY THE SAME WORD AND DIFFERENT WORDS AT THE SAME TIME. IF YOU LISTEN FROM THE OTHER DIRECTION, IT SAYS-” His hands gesture, “Care for him badly, and you'll badly care.” He sighs. “OR SOMETHING CLOSE TO THAT. IT’S VERY VEXING, CONSIDERING HIS SAYS EXACTLY THE SAME THING WHEN I CHECK HIM.”

“guess paps can say it closer than me. heh.”

“I wonder what it means, though. It could mean: care for him well and you won’t need to...care for him? Or you won’t need to sacrifice much if you care for him well? Sacrifice anymore? Do _you_ know?”

He shakes his head, but he’s still smiling. “might be all of em, or none. who knows, right?”

“That’s a good question,” you ponder, rubbing your chin. “Who decides what it says?” He laughs outright, which isn’t what you were expecting. “What?”

“s’jus’...that’s like asking who made the clouds, or decides if it rains.”

“Oh.” You blink. “So it’s like the kind of question someone asks when they’ve been...drinking a lot, maybe?”

Okay, now he’s laughing even harder. “kinda question paps asks when he’s hitting the milkshakes, yeah,” he guffaws.

“I DON’T HAVE TO BE _DRUNK_ TO SPEND QUALITY TIME PONDERING THE SEVENTEEN ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS PERTAINING TO THE MEANING OF _LIFE_ , SANS.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“BUT IT HELPS,” he adds, tilting his skull thoughtfully.

Sans just folds his arms up on the table despite Papyrus’s squawk of protest, shoves his face down into them, and proceeds to laugh himself silly.

Then he falls asleep.

***

“Hi, Grillby.”

… _Hello. Can I get you anything?_

“No, that’s...” you trail off, because that’s not actually polite in this context. “Actually… can I have that thing Sans usually orders for us?”

Grillby crackles softly. He seems pleased; you’re glad you’re getting a little better at this, at least.

… _Yes. I’ll go get some._

You flush a little. “As long as it’s not too much trouble.”

He tilts his... head? at you, then wordlessly glides into the back.

You’ve been feeling a weird amorphous anxiety ever since Sans had talked to you about bringing more of your stuff over to his place, and you really are having a hard time figuring out why. It’s not out of the question that it’s just the background radiation of the whole Frisk thing, or your health, or...well. That’s never out of the question, but this anxiety is still weirdly specific. You had Diane give you a ride downtown after work today, because going to Grillby’s always seems to make everyone you know feel better, and there’s really no reason you can’t come here on your own if you feel like it, right?

And yeah, maybe a part of you is curious about this whole “staying” thing, which you still have no clue what the fuck exactly it means. Sans apparently “stays here” or lives here or whatever, so you might be able to glean some context just by coming by, shooting the shit for a while. It’s still early, so there’s not much going on yet.

You turn your head and look back over at Lola, who’s sitting up and mostly just seems to be blinking at the wall. Every once in a while she lifts a hand reaches out in front of her. She makes some sort of repeated gesture, but you’re not really sure what it is or why she’s doing it. It doesn’t matter; she’s not bothering anyone. That’s the great thing about this place, and you’re sure a lot of people would agree: you can kind of just do whatever you need to do here, and no one’s going to hassle you about it as long as you’re not hassling anyone else.

After a few minutes, Grillby returns with an oddly shaped bottle. You realize you’ve never actually seen the bottle this drink comes from, it’s always already been poured into a glass. The bottle’s sort of lumpy, and the brown glass it’s made of is looks thick...bubbled in some places, too. You wonder if Grillby makes the glass himself, since he’s obviously made of fire. It’s probably not that hard to make glass if you're made of fire.

“What is this actually called?” You make conversation comfortably enough; although you usually don’t come here by yourself, you and Grillby have a pretty good rapport at this point. Which is of course why you’re here alone this time.

… _These don’t really have names_ , he explains, producing a short tumbler with a flourish. _… This one’s Sans, so it’s not surprising you like it._

Um.

“What?”

 _..._ _The catalyst for this drink is Sans’s magic_ , he explains after a long moment of silence.

Your eyes go round, and you gape down at your glass, then back up at Grillby.

… _Oh, my recipes aren’t a secret. Fuku and myself are the only ones who can make them work, after all. I don’t…_

He flickers at you, interrupts himself.

… _It’s not his magic_ _anymore_ , he continues. _… What I do changes it into something else, so it’s not…_ okay yeah he’s definitely laughing now. _… It’s not a bodily fluid or anything like that._ _I’d insist I don’t serve those here, but...let’s just say they’re not on the menu_ , he cackle-crackles gaily.

“Wait a second. That was the first drink he ever gave me here, and he… it’s _him_?”

… _Yes_ , he replies with what you’re pretty sure is a grin. _… We were all a bit surprised._

“Does that have some kind of special meaning?”

… _Yes, I suppose it does, now that I think about it. It would have...hmmm. We all knew that he wanted you to like him, and that he was hoping to form a closer connection with you. Because he also was drinking it, we knew what kind of connection he would have been hoping for, which is the kind that you ended up making._

You cover your hot face with your hands.

“You said something about it to him when you brought it over, didn’t you?”

He crackles merrily.

… _I am sure I did. I can’t quite remember what it was, but I’d already dipped in myself. So we were all on the same page, I suppose._

Now you feel weird drinking it in front of him.

“Now I feel weird drinking it in front of you,” you admit with a sigh.

He flicker-shrugs, then to your surprise he grabs the glass and just sort of...puts it in his face. The liquid disappears, and he sets it down. Then he flickers at something behind you, and you turn around. Lola’s got two furry fingers held up in the air above your head, and you hear Grillby’s crackling laughter again.

… _It seems it’s a party now. The guest of honor is notably absent, but perhaps he is merely unavoidably detained, as is oft his wont._

You hear Lola’s soft, jagged laugh for the first time as Grillby pours three identical glasses of cherry liqueur, then sashays around the bar to bring two of them to her booth. He stays while she empties the glasses, then brings them back around and drops them carefully in the filled sink.

“Is that… special water? The kind Sans can drink?”

… _Yes. It_ _is_ _from underground. Water from the surface won’t dilute what’s in the glasses, so it cannot clean them. Although either is a bad idea for me to touch._ He crackles another comfortable laugh; you give in and drain the third glass sitting in front of you. He gathers it up, sets it in the sink.

“Do all the drinks have meanings like that? Is that okay to ask?”

_...It’s fine to ask, yes. Actually...would you like to watch a small ceremony that involves the meanings?_

You hear Lola’s raspy laugh again, but it doesn’t seem mean-spirited.

… _She’s laughing because this is often done for someone you’re hoping will show you their soul,_ he explains, making you blush a little. _… She remembers many things others don’t. But it is done for many other occasions as well. it’s not...sexual? Not sexual, just something you might do for someone you like._

“You like me?”

… _Yes? I would have thought that was clear by now._

“I like you too, Grillby.” You’re grinning; those smooth regulars really go to your head sometimes. You’d blame your empty stomach but you’re not sure the drinks here even get close to your stomach. “And I’d love to see your sexy ceremony.”

… _It’s not-_ He gives you a look. You don’t know how you know, but you do. You definitely hear the sigh, then he drinks another glass of smooth regular Sans bodily fluid and spreads his arms out with a flourish.

His fingers dart down under the bar, and he pulls out six tall, thin-blown glasses and lines them up in front of you. He then produces various bottles of different shapes and sizes, puts his hand over the top of the first glass. He pours the liquid _through_ the back of his own hand, and you’re realizing as he goes down the line that each glass is holding a different color. In fact...

“Are these the colors of human soul traits?” you ask breathlessly once he’s finished.

… _Yes, I suppose so. These are the oldest and… most traditional of the drinks I serve. Presented this way, the person makes a choice that reveals their intentions._

“How does that work?”

… _Hmm. If someone were to choose the cyan, then you might know that they are feeling rushed or too eager, or it might also mean that they believe that you are. If they chose the green, they may feel they have a need that is not being met, or...perhaps even that you have wronged them. Those are only some of the meanings; most must be derived from the context of the people involved and the circumstances the glasses are being presented in._

“You talk a lot like...Toriel? And Papyrus, sometimes. Why is that?” You feel warm and loose, and it’s easier to ask questions, easier to laugh at yourself. Easier to forgive yourself and others.

… _It’s because I’m old_ , he… giggles? Maybe.

… _Old as dirt, which I_ _ **also**_ _probably shouldn’t touch in large quantities._

You blink rapidly, not only because of the joke, but because you haven’t heard him use that kind of...emphasis? before. It’s hard to know for sure, but it’s interesting.

“Are you older than Sans?”

… _Not appreciably, although I can’t say for sure._

“Why does he talk different?”

… _Nobody talks like Sans_ , he says fondly. _… It’s part of why things are so much more fun when he’s around._

You sigh happily, nod in agreement. You definitely can’t argue with that; then you blush a little, remembering that Sans apparently has a speech impediment. It doesn’t seem like one to you, in fact, it seems like his voice can do a lot of things other peoples’ can’t. Then you blush again; those aren’t mutually exclusive ideas, and you should know that better than anyone. Grillby flickers, pours four glasses of Sans. Takes two more around behind you, then returns.

“Can a show you a thing certain humans do sometimes?” you ask, leaning in and grinning wide.

… _Yes._

You pick up your glass, hold it out. “You do what I do,” you instruct enthusiastically, and when he extends his own glass you clink them together very lightly. “Cheers!”

… _Cheers._

You drink at the same time.

… _I have done that before. Humans often do it here. Do you know what the reason for it is?_

“Nope,” you giggle. “Or…maybe I do, actually. I’ve read stuff like, it’s supposed to be ‘drinking to your health’? A blessing, or a...good wish, I guess?

… _I like that idea._

“Me too,” you reply. “I wanted to ask you about something.”

… _Cherries and explaining things don’t go together very well_ , he replies, flickering a laugh.

“That’s okay. I don’t know if anyone can really explain it, but... I think Sans asked me to move in with him, and for me- or, what I’m used to? That’s kind of a big deal, but he says that’s something we basically already did. That we already do? It’s hard for me to understand, because we’re different in a lot of ways. I was wondering...I wanted to see what you think about it,” you realize how true it is as you say it.

… _What exactly did he ask you?_

“Um...he asked me… or. He suggested I bring more of my stuff over to his house and keep it there? So I’d feel better when I stayed over.”

… _Is it a problem for you to bring more things?_

“Well...no. I mean, I can’t carry a lot of things on my own, but that’s not really what I mean. It’s like...” you frown. “For me it’s like the thing with Sans and the drinks, maybe. It was significant to everyone there, but I couldn’t see it because I didn’t have context for it. When you bring over a lot of stuff to someone’s house to keep there, especially furniture, it’s like you’re making a commitment, or… showing intentions?”

… _I see. Well, I cannot say it isn’t something like that for us, too. Obviously keeping your belongings somewhere expresses intent to spent a great deal of time there. That is certainly symbolic, although I don’t believe it’s quite as much of a..ceremony as it might be for humans. Or, your sort of humans. I am aware there are differences, just as there are between myself and many other monsters._ He looks smug about it, and it’s sort of cute.

“The way I feel doesn’t make sense,” you realize as you say it. You sigh, put your face between your hands and squish your cheeks. “I think I’m freaking out about this because… I’m always worried there’s something huge I’m missing, Grillby. Some massive problem, or cultural...thingie...”

You look up at his gently flickering face, smile at your reflection in his spectacles. You wonder if they’re prescription. “Like it’s staring me right in the face, but it’s still going to hit me like a freight train and I won’t see it until it’s too late. Did Sans ever tell you I didn’t realize we were dating until...well. Months later? Just because it wasn’t exactly what I’m used to.”

… _He might have mentioned it in one of his...shows._

You cover your face with your hands, but still giggle. “I have trouble remembering some of the beginning of the summer. Sorry.”

… _That was part of the show, too._ Grillby flicker-crackles his odd little laugh. _… Incidentally, if you would like to remain a while, Sans will be joining us_ _later_ _. Lola’s requested_ _him_ _, I believe._

You turn around to look.

… _She wants to pay her tab, and the her assistant’s fee is quite generous._

The longer you spend with Grillby, the easier he is to read. That’s never worked out well for you with humans, but it does with monsters. It’s nice to feel comfortable for a change. And there’s something about Grillby’s that just...makes you feel like whatever happens, whatever you need to do or however you feel...it’ll be okay. You can let it all hang out if you need to.

“Do you let a lot of people keep a tab?” You scoop out some coins and set them on the counter; he ignores him like he often does. It’s not unusual to see the entire bar heaped with piles of G when it gets late.

… _No._ He grins. _… Sans and Lola are the exceptions to the rule. And even they must pay eventually._

“If you don’t mind me asking...how can Lola pay her tab if she doesn’t ever leave? She doesn’t work or anything, right?

… _Lola is generally quite solvent. Many patrons pay her._

You blink.“What do they pay her for?”

… _Her company and conversation._

“Oh.” Your eyebrows raise, but you’re thinking maybe the implications there aren’t what they might be in a human establishment.

… _If you’re curious, you’re welcome to approach her. She likes you, and she and Sans are quite close._

“I don’t think she’s ever spoken to me, Grillby.”

… _Lola is not forward. If you’d like to speak with her, I suggest beginning with 20G. She will let you know from there._

You think about it. You browse the various colors in front of you, considering what you know of traits and their associations, although you don’t know what these are necessarily supposed to do. At the same time, you’re feeling flattered and special that Grillby did his ceremony for you, and you’re not about to turn up your nose at it.

You consider the anxieties that have been gnawing away at you. You choose orange, drink it down. Grillby gives you a look, and there’s something soft and nostalgic about it. You wonder if maybe he did this for Sans once, but you don’t ask. Grillby can be prickly sometimes, and you’re not feeling _that_ brave.

But you do feel confident having a conversation with someone you’ve never talked to before, and you’re intrigued by the possibility of what someone who gets paid to talk might have to say. You give Grillby a nod and a smile, then pick up your other glass and carry it over to Lola’s booth.

Her hooded gaze doesn’t waver as you sit down in front of her, but when you open your mouth, she speaks before you can. Her voice is high and light, but there’s something else, some kind of rasp or tone underneath it.

“Sans has more than one voice,” she says, and your mouth just stays open. “So do I, but this is the one I use here, for this. Different voices are appropriate for different occasions. So he and I have that in common.”

You slide ten coins across the table, she smiles, puts her hand out and takes them without looking away from you, tucks them into her clothes somewhere. She’s very pretty, and her fur is white and smooth.

“Thank you. Next time will be only half that.”

She drinks, sets her glass down.

“You and your sister each believe you are a burden to the other, and this prevents you from helping each other as much as you could. If you can forgive her for needing things you don’t, she can forgive you for hiding your pain for so long.”

You slide ten coins across the table again, and this time she only takes half. Tucks them away.

“Thank you. Next time will be three times that.”

“Um...” you rummage in your pocket; you have enough. “I… are you an oracle of some kind?”

“No,” she smiles. “I listen.”

You open your mouth, but nothing comes out. She nods in understanding, makes a soft, high noise that might be a laugh.

“I agree, that doesn’t quite explain it. How about this. In much the same way Sans sees, I listen. I hear everything that happened here, and sometimes things that didn’t. Many people want my advice because I pay attention, other want stories because I am very old, and…” She grins. “I remember many things others don’t. Some want to share their feelings, others want sympathy. Some just want to be listened to; as I have said, I am very good at that. Some cannot pay, and others I would prefer they do not. Sans is one of the latter; Grillby is the former because I also do not leave here, and that brings certain restrictions and benefits to us both. Grillby’s life is a traditional one, and I am a part of that.”

You rummage in your pocket, but she holds out her hand with a smile.

“That was not next time yet, I was just explaining myself. You can feel free to speak, ask, or listen now, though.”

You think about it, and she grins at you like she’s excited to be talking with you. You feel very paid attention to, and very...like she understands where you’re coming from. She’s very skilled.

“Oh,” Lola interjects, closing one heavily lidded eye in a rather familiar way. “I want to add, I’m not pretending. I do this because I enjoy it, and because some people interest me. If I wanted to stay here without a tab, I’d be entitled to based on the terms between Grillby and I. Sometimes I do not speak at all for a very long time. I also don’t talk to everyone; it doesn’t really matter if they pay or not if I don’t like them. I like you, and… well.” She opens her eye again.

You set the money on the counter, added to what was already there from last time.

“What was the best time you ever had with Sans?”

Her face softens, and her hooded gaze falls to the coins as he holds herself gently. She leans forward, stays quiet long enough that you’re starting to wonder if you made a mistake by asking her a question. Or maybe just that question...but then she speaks. Her voice is soft, the rasp more pronounced underneath.

“After Sans stopped staying with Toriel, he spent nearly two years seeking out and allowing humans to use him sexually in whatever manner they wanted to, with very few limitations,” she begins, and you goggle yet again. “This harmed him in ways that are difficult to talk about, even for me. Most people, even the ones who love him, don’t truly know what he was doing. That is for the best. But I do, because this is where he came afterwards, to lie underneath the table with me like we used to underground on the very worst days. We would feed and care for each other, cuddle and drink when it became too much to bear.”

She doesn’t look up.

“I am… wounded. Sans is also wounded. I know the nature of it because six years ago, Sans came here badly hurt on gyftmas, and we touched each others’ souls under this table. The pain we shared was exquisite; that is how I discovered that what he was doing did not create his wound, but was meant to help him find it. It didn’t work, and I showed him a way to ask his body stop doing things without his permission. He knows what I have lost now, and what I have done because of it. He showed me the pieces are part of the whole, and how to wrap them together. Because we shared that pain, we gave ourselves back to ourselves together, and we have not done that before or since.”

She sighs happily, looks up and meets your eyes with a soft smile.

“That was the best time I ever had with Sans. I’m telling you the truth because you also know the way he hurt himself; because I think you should know why he did it, and why he stopped.”

She cups the coins on the table, slides her hand toward herself and tucks the money into her clothes somewhere.

“Thank you,” she intones quietly, beaming under her hooded gaze. “It’s free now.”

You sniff, wipe your eyes on your sweater sleeve.

“Um,” you try, then clear your throat. “Would he want me to know that?”

“It doesn’t belong only to him. It belongs to me as well, and I’ve given it where I saw fit.”

“I can’t argue with that. And...thank you for telling me. Can I ask you something?” You put your hand to your pocket, but she waves her hand at you.

“It’s free now,” she repeats.

“Like, all day?”

Her laugh is odd-shaped with angles and edges, but it’s beautiful.

“Always. Sans stays here, and you stay with Sans.”

“Uh...wow, really? Can...I ask you about that?”

“You were already going to ask me about something. You can ask both, if you like. It’s a good day.” She holds up her hand again rather abruptly, fingers in a shape that holds no significance for you.

“They were going to be the same thing, actually. I guess… what does it mean to stay with someone? In the sense that monsters use?”

Her lids lower thoughtfully, and she smiles again.

“Monsters are few, and very different from each other. Some like myself choose individuality; others prefer to be a part of a whole, like many Froggits, Moldsmols, and Vulkins do.” She flicks her eyes at you. “If you can tell them apart, it may be best not to mention that to them.”

Oh. Geez, okay. Good to know. You wonder what Chell thinks of its nickname.

“Many of us have lost much.” It’s almost a whisper. “However, what we still have is each other.” She’s quiet for a bit; you just wait.

“For many of us we are ourselves first, and who we are to each other comes after. This is something we shape every day, and what we do does not necessarily change who we are to each other. That is something we decide. Everyone needs somewhere they can go, and people they can be with. To stay with someone is whatever you decide it will be, and the relationships involved are the ones you decide to have.”

You nod slowly.

“So… you either do or you don’t. And you don’t have to, but you can?”

She laughs high and sweet, edges flashing.

“Exactly.”

You wipe your face with your sweater again.

“Sans is coming tonight?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Can you ask him to bring me a big thing of probiotic yogurt here?”

She laughs again, and you love the sound of it. “I don’t know what that is, but I will ask. Do you mind if I ask why?”

You gaze over her shoulder at Grillby, who’s decided to quaff the remaining drinks one by one, then downs another glass of Sans. He apparently wasn’t kidding about the party, and it’s already started as far as he’s concerned.

“After a conversation that intense, I really feel like I could use a _hug_ ,” you reply, grinning wickedly.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a sidefic chapter if you really want to know what happened between Sans and Lola under the table: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17952167/chapters/42726410  
> Just be warned I made myself cry writing that. Not TOO upsetting but like. Hurt/Comfort?


	37. grilled bees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Dog Days Are Over - Florence + The Machine](https://youtu.be/ny4deVFsYuo)

“Are you seriously letting humans donate their souls to...whatever it is you’re up to?”

Frisk’s eyes glitter secretively, and they don’t answer one way or the other. You’re sure they can tell the idea horrifies you, though. You couldn’t even say if informed consent would be possible for something like that. A human being and a disembodied soul might not want the same things, or have the same priorities. There’s no way to know, at least none that you’re aware of.

“Do you really think Alphys won’t tell me if I ask her?” you try instead.

“We don’t have any souls,” Frisk gestures finally. “We just take scans.” They’re telling the truth, and you let out a relieved sigh.

You’re in the upstairs hallway at their house (and apparently sort-of-yours-now-too) near Papyrus’s bathroom, because you’d decided to help things along with your sister by having a cookout. Showing her a lot of the things she’s so worried about, she doesn’t actually need to be because she won’t be _alone_. Even if she and the kids do come... alone. The summer’s almost over, and there’s something about the sultry atmosphere over Ebott that

 

makes you blink at Sans’s face an inch or so away from you on the pallet you’ve set up on the lawn of his suddenly and suspiciously existent backyard. It’s made of the cushions from your couch, which you’d both decided to take a break from moving into your room when he’d asked if you wanted to see something cool.

“I think this is happening slightly out of order,” you say hesitantly.

“gotcha. anything i can do to help?”

You sigh, shake your head slightly.

“you know what day it is?”

“Tuesday,” you reply softly. “It’s not like last time.”

It’s nice to take a break, although cuddling like this is making you want to get up and finish less and less. You’re not really in pain or anything...you just don’t want to. It’s nice and warm, and Sans smells like his magic, tomatoes, and old books baking in the sun. He resonates against you softly, and the good vibes you get from cuddling him never lose their charm, or even their novelty, really. The way clothes feel sliding over smooth, living bones is heady, always intoxicating. The breeze smells like charcoal grills, and even the lightest hint of the ocean when the wind changes direction.

“Did we invite everyone to a cookout yet?”

His eye lights flicker gently.

“nope. that’s where you grill dogs outside and have people over to your house, right?” You nod. “you wanna?”

“I do,” you sigh happily. “Since apparently we’re going to have one. It really-”

 

makes you glad to be surrounded by friends, family, food and good feelings. Also a bunch of ‘dogs, since you’re hopelessly and happily entangled in a romance with a troubled and possibly narcoleptic minor hot dog deity.

“Sans,” Nattie lisps, tugging at the worn blue hoodie. “Carry me.” They extend their arms demandingly.

“was jus’ about to ask you ta carry _me_ , kiddo.” He gives a convincingly put-upon sigh, tilts his skull down with a tragic expression. “but you beat me to it, fair and square. guess i gotta.”

They look offended by that. “You’re too big for me to carry you.”

Sans laughs soft and sincere, then scoops Nattie up quickly enough to make them squeak in surprise. “you might be the only one that thinks i’m too big for anything, bud.”

He balances them on his broad hipbone in a noticeably practiced motion, then makes his shuffling, slo-mo way over to the grill. “all aboard the ‘dog train,” he drawls, sounding half-asleep. “gotta keep your hands an arms inside the vehicle at all times, k? not just when it’s movin’.”

They get far enough away that you can’t understand Nattie anymore, but it sounds like it might be a question. Sans’s voice still cuts through, though.

“i dunno, what do you think? got a whole brace a hot animals here, not sure what all they are yet. you wanna help me bone up on my taxonomy?”

Nattie makes an aggrieved noise, and Sans laughs again. He’s still wearing his hoodie in the sweltering weather; it’s not just hot, it’s humid, too. There aren’t any clouds, but there’s a practically vibrating white haze in the sky that makes it clear just how much water’s dissolved in the air. But there’s still enough of a breeze that you’re willing to stand in the sun, even if it makes you sweat a little. It helps that you’re dressed almost as revealingly as Papyrus, in shorts and a thick-cut slab of tank top.

Speaking of whom, when you look over at Papyrus standing next to you alarmingly copious tears are streaming from his sockets. You realize you _can_ see the points of his eyes a bit when he’s crying, his magic making a kind of reflective background that differentiates the sockets from the points in them, even under the shade of his broad-brimmed sun hat.

“Are you okay, dude?” you whisper, aghast. You pat his underclothing-protected shoulder lightly.

He tears his eyes away from his brother’s back, then wipes his face with gloved fingertips perfunctorily. It is promptly moistened again. His magic’s a different color than Sans’s, too. It’s...oh. Orange and dark blue, except also not. It just makes you think you see it, because it’s also dark and light the same way that has nothing to do with the long, low sunlight hitting it. Like it’s not operating in the same reality as everything else.

“THAT’S EXACTLY HOW HE USED TO CARRY…” he replies, voice sounding much the same as it usually does, harsh and clear, but also much quieter at the same time. You can’t quite put your finger on it. “MK. THEY WOULDN’T EAT WHEN WE FIRST FOUND THEM, YOU KNOW. IT TOOK SOME… CONVINCING.”

You look back at Sans to give him some privacy. He’s turning the dogs, and you hear Nattie murmuring.

“that’s true,” Sans replies. “but they’re dead now, so it’s a shame ta let em get wasted, right? everything wants a lil change at some point. when they’re ready, they just lie down in the river, let the waterfall take em to where people can find em. scoop em right out easy as pie, then they bring them to me so i can heat em up, give ‘dogs to people that want em. s’why you gotta appreciate each one, right?”

“What do monster babies eat?” you ask the leaky skeleton next to you.

“USUALLY?? WHATEVER YOU GIVE THEM??” Papyrus doesn’t sound sad, and you wonder why his sockets are leaking. You’re getting the impression that when skeletons emote that way, it might not actually be the same as when human beings cry.

“Are you crying?”

“NO.”

“Okay.”

“I JUST CAUGHT SOMETHING IN MY EYE.”

“Gotcha.”

He sighs. “THAT’S WHAT SANS SAYS. HE SAYS WHAT YOU SAY SOMETIMES, TOO. I KNOW HOW THAT IS.”

“What did MK like to eat?”

“WHATEVER SANS GAVE THEM.”

“So what was the problem?”

“THEY ONLY ATE WHAT SANS GAVE THEM. I…”

You glance surreptitiously over, and it appears whatever Papyrus caught has been subsequently released. His sundress flutters fetchingly in the breeze, and the print’s almost as florally baroque as the painting you’d made of him. He’s got his arms crossed with his gloved fingers tucked in carefully; if his leaking is like Sans’s, it doesn’t actually go anywhere.

“I AM USUALLY MUCH MORE CONVINCING, BUT MK WOULD ONLY LISTEN TO SANS FOR...A LONG TIME.”

Ahh. Time underground had been long or short according to its own whims. So who knows how long it actually was.

Nattie shrieks suddenly, making you jump.

“hey, hey. s’all right,” Sans soothes. “guess that bee was ready for a lil change, too. not too many other reasons to fly right into a fire like that, right?”

“It’s dead now,” Nattie sniffs loudly, then continues in a quieter tone.

“I FEEL A COSTUME CHANGE COMING ON,” Papyrus announces at a more usual volume for him, and you notice your sister stop, slightly startled in the middle of her approach. The skeleton turns gracefully on his heel and stalks back toward the house. Well, if his gloves are wet, he would need to change them; changing his gloves probably necessitates the rest to also be changed accordingly.

Your sister comes over to you as the door shuts behind Papyrus, and watches you watching Sans chat with Nattie as he tends to his dogs. You didn’t realize they took so long to cook, needed this much attention.

“He’s pretty good with kids, isn’t he?” Angie drawls suspiciously. You’re not sure why she’s suspicious, unless she’s caught on to what you’re up to with this whole cookout deal.

You glance over. She’s caught on to what you’re up to with this whole cookout deal. You look back at Sans and Nattie.

“k. what’s this one’s name?”

“Andy!” Nattie hollers.

“m’right next to ya, kid. you don’t gotta yell.”

“I am a kid, so I gotta yell! That’s what kids are for,” Nattie yells.

“thought kids were for carrying.”

“We’re for carrying _and_ yelling. Not yelling at, though. _We_ get to do the yelling, and _you_ have to listen.”

“well, i’m listening whether i have to or not, cause you still haven’t told me this guy’s name yet.”

“That’s a girl. That’s… Pepper!”

“they got genders too, huh? welp, now we gotta go back so you can tell me the rest of em.”

You look back at your sister. “Can you really blame me?” She looks unsure about that, so you raise your eyebrows.

“What’s going on with Nattie? They’ve been…” you sigh, trying to figure out how to say it. “They haven’t wanted to be carried since they learned how to walk. Now they want everyone to carry them, they’re worried about plants and bugs dying, and they’re giving everything genders. They never used to care before.”

Angie looks grave, and you swallow.

“We’re going to move here,” she announces very, very quietly.

You taste a sharp burst of elation, then a roil of dread as your sister’s expression sinks into your brain.

“What happened?” your voice is tight.

“It’s already dealt with,” she informs you quick and low. “Some kids were messing with Nattie. I...”

She exhales tight and slow.

“I think you have a point. Nattie should be able to be somewhere they don’t have to worry if it’s okay to just be themself,” she adds with emphasis. “And don’t have to worry about being messed with because they’re a themself.”

“Are they okay?” you whisper.

“They will be.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s going on with Matt, Ange?”

You watch Sans taking care of Nattie, pointing out the changes in color and texture that indicate level of doneness, or maybe what kind of animal they are. You’re not paying too much attention because you’re kind of upset now.

“He doesn’t get it,” she admits grudgingly. “He doesn’t even get why I want to get their name changed to ‘Nattie’ on the birth certificate. He acts like it’s some kind of slight to his dad or something.”

 

Grillby picks up the ‘dog, then hesitates.

… _What is its name?_

“Huh?”

… _I can’t eat a stranger._

“that’s andy,” Sans calls from under the table. “they don’t have a gender.”

… _Ahh. I see._

The ‘dog disappears with a soft whump.

 

“Hey Ange...just so you know, the thing’s happening again,” you admit grudgingly.

She blinks, alarmed. “Do you need to go to the-”

“No,” you tell her firmly. “It’s _not_ the same as last time. Just...out of order, not all at once. I remember it all. Okay?”

“How..much?”

“Less than a week. It’s not a big deal, okay?”

“What day is it?” she asks anxiously.

“Sunday,” you reply, rolling your eyes. “It’s _not_ like _last time_.”

She looks less than happy with it, but lets it drop. Probably a good idea, since if she keeps telling you to go to the doctor every single time you let her know time’s not passing normally you’ll just stop telling her, and she knows it.

“Those two really hit it off, huh?” She indicates across the yard with her chin.

You look over at Shonda and MK, cross legged under one of the suspiciously not-regional fruit trees this backyard appears to be populated with. Shonda’s gesticulating wildly, forgetting her usual dignity as her face fills with emphatic delight, then turns to disgust, prompting MK’s musically raucous laughter.

“I think they both like those projected viewbooks. You know, the ones where everyone lives in like, underground tubes in the future, and there isn’t enough food or light so they have to learn mushroom agriculture?”

“It seems like everything about that now. Books and shows, and even the matrix programming. I wonder why,” your sister comments idly, and you start formulating your answer even though you know she doesn’t entirely care.

“Basically, ever since the monsters emerged, literary zeitgeist has been keyed into a sort of self-indulgent cultural guilt based around...”

Yep. Ange already looks slightly sorry she asked, and your grin sharpens.

 

“put some a those on there, too.”

“But...that’s human food.”

“yeah. that’s grillbz’s plate, right?”

“Uh huh.”

“he can eat human food. he just kinda...” He makes an upward, slightly wiggly gesture.

“Oh, okay. Yeah, I think he’ll like this, then.” You fill a space in the sectioned coated-cardboard plate with greens, using the slotted spoon to drain off the broth. Although you suppose Sans would know what is and isn’t possible for Grillby to eat, less liquid seems like a better call than more. Plus that way it won’t splosh out into the rest of the segments and soak the cornbread.

“I’m still sad monsters don’t have corn. No cornmeal, no cornbread.”

“well, can’t really miss it if you never had any to begin with,” he points out reasonably enough. “smells nice, though. frisk makes that microwave cornbread all the time.”

“Pretty sure that’s popcorn, Sans.” You frown, decide to add a ‘dog in the long slot even though/because it’s something he’s already had, then pick out another one of the segmented plates to fill with an assortment of human and monster cuisine. They’re kind of awesome, since they also have lid thingies that can be placed over top. “Why do microwaves work on monster food?”

“same reason you can eat monster food,” he replies with a lazy grin.

“That’s one of those ridiculously complicated things you manage to condense into a sentence, isn’t it?”

He shrugs, then turns and ambles toward the garage.

 

“I can’t believe that’s really Mettaton,” Ange whispers in your ear.

The single-wheeled rectangle slowly turns to face you both, and the ticker along the bottom of his screen displays the words: YOU _BET_ IT’S METTATON, BEAUTIFUL! HAVE WE BEEN _INTRODUCED_? as he rolls his dramatic way towards you, arms upraised and bent at the elbows. You wonder when you’d finally admitted you can’t understand what he’s saying in that form; it must have been one of the parts of the early summer you can’t remember.

 

… _I killed_ _2_ _13 humans in one day_ , Grillby answers casually, touching his finger to the segment containing greens.

… _Otherwise, no._

You gape at him. Then turn your whole body around on the stool to gape at the table that has Sans and Lola underneath. You turn back towards Grillby, but there’s still nothing coming out of your mouth.

… _Of course he knows. No one would be able to hide something like that from Sans._

“He’s okay with that?” you say faintly.

… _Not particularly._ Grillby absorbs a square of cornbread. _Although I can touch his magic without harm, so my reason_ _s_ _may be better than he thinks. This is absolutely delightful, by the way. My apologies if the conversation or the company is less so._

“I...” You watch him closely, but he’s hard for you to read. Sans has confirmed that he has facial features, but you can’t manage to tell what they are sometimes, much less what they’re expressing. He seems a bit on the reddish side, but who knows what that entails. “Why did you kill them?”

… _To prevent the completion of the genocide of my people, and the destruction of_ _generation_ _s’ worth of knowledge along with me_ , he answers succinctly.

Oh.

“You’re the last fire elemental left?” you whisper, appalled.

… _Of course not,_ he answers as the mac and cheese slowly pops and crackles into nonexistence. _…_ _Don’t be ridiculous._

… _Sans must_ _love_ _this_ , he adds softly as he looks down in fascination, then turns an odd shade, almost purplish. He flickers a bit.

… _You know my daughter Fuku recently had a child of her own, correct? My other child, Heats,_ _seems_ _a bit less inclined to procreate,_ _although he has agreed to foster Fuku’s child_ _._ _B_ _ut who knows what tomorrow may bring. Now that we_ _ **have**_ _those._

Oh. He means “tomorrows”. That’s what they have now. Maybe you just have to pay better attention.

“Sorry, Grillby.”

He looks down at his now-empty plate for a long moment.

… _No. Don’t be. Actually…_

He flickers, turns a strange sienna shade at the top of his...hair?

… _**I** am sorry. I’m being difficult, because I am a difficult person. You might have noticed that Sans seems to surround himself with difficult people, yes?_

“I have, but I’m not going to take that as an insult,” you remark dryly. The hue deepens, and you relent. “I’m busting your bones. Yeah, I noticed.”

… _I don’t have bones, and yet you have succeeded_.

You snort, grin.

… _I don’t… like humans_ , he says after a minute. His head comes back up, and it seems like he’s looking at you. His glasses are facing you, at least. _…Mostly for the reasons I just mentioned, slightly for the reasons Sans will have made… obvious to you at some point._

Your eyebrows hit your hairline, but you nod slowly. Humans had been pretty rough on Sans, and it’s hard ignore that even though he’d sought them out for precisely that reason, if what you suspect is correct. Obviously Grillby knows about it, since Sans had confessed that Grillby had often healed or… “taken care of” his injuries during that time. Whatever they had been, and however they’d been caused without killing him outright. You don’t know, and you’re not sure you ever actually want to.

… _I like **you** , however. I am merely peevish because I wish I could have gone to the cookout, and it’s not often I feel anything negative towards my own life or the choices I have made to shape it. That has nothing to do with you, and it is unfair to provoke you because I am uncomfortable. It’s ironic considering the cause of my mood is being unable to spend time with you at your family function, and I’m taking it out on you._

He does one of his long-flickering heavy sighs, which makes an uneven sort of hissing noise.

 

“Ange says she’s moving here because kids are messing with Nattie about their gender and she might be leaving Matt because he doesn’t get it,” you inform Sans in a casual tone. He’s lying next to you on a pallet made of old couch cushions he found somewhere, to replicate the awesome experience you’d both accidentally discovered on couch moving day. The day you’d planned the cookout on. You’re grateful you can keep track of what’s happening which day, even if they’re not happening in order.

“huh. guess you’re not as glad as you could be, then,” he sighs. “nattie’s a good kid.” he grins a little, narrows his sockets. “good as _most_ kids, anyhow. lotta people think kids are innocent, but-” he cuts off, and his hand rummages in his pocket.

“you wanted to take a plate to grillbz, right?”

You nod.

“k. how bout we do that now? ‘pparently lola’s havin’ a rough time.”

“Yeah,” you agree softly. “Let’s bring the hash slinger some hash. Bring the good times to the good place, right?”

His smile makes your soul warm like the sun’s shining right into it. It gets suggestive when you put your hand to your chest, give it a little rub. You don’t know why; you just feel very….aware of it, for some reason. Wait, isn’t there a reason? Yes, it’s just out of order. You giggle when you think about it, then put your arms out so you and Sans can use each other for leverage as you try and rise to a sitting position of the extremely smushy old sofa cushions, which teeter and mash with your movements on the patchy grass.

 

You frown at Frisk in the hallway.

“Did you unhappen something recently?” You gesture bluntly. “Just be straightforward with me for once, okay?”

Frisk’s eyes widen a bit, and they shake their head. Gesture negatively for good measure.

You sigh. “It must just be leftover from last time then. I thought it was done.”

“Do you know what day it is?”

“Sunday,” you gesture, say aloud for good measure. “It’s _not_ like last time.”

 

You wake up Thursday morning after your first night spent alone at the skeleton household for your own reasons, after going to bed in your own room and sleeping by yourself. Frisk and Sans had been absent when you’d gone to bed, but now they’re curled up asleep on the sofa in the living room, just like you’d seen them so long ago, on the first night you’d ever spent here. Frisk’s head is centered on his chest, disheveled and vacant with slumber; Sans’s arm’s wrapped around their shoulders, somehow managing to envelop them comfortingly. The phone with its little speakers has fallen on the floor, but it’s still playing ancient standards, slow and sweet.

Seeing them this way makes it easy to imagine how they’d been when Frisk was still smaller than Sans, or at least smaller than they are now, even though you’d had a hard time envisioning that before. It makes you see the past, see a child who’d been hurt very badly finding solace in the care of a being whose job had been, at some point that hadn’t happened, to kill them. To kill each other, over and over in more awful ways each time, until time itself ended.

Annihilated.

They’re still representatives of opposing forces in their own ways; each with their terrible wounds, their fatal flaw. One charges once more into the breach until their own determination to get it right this time devours not only them but everyone else; the other gives up on himself in a hundred little ways, gives up hope before giving himself a chance to fail...or succeed. But they’re not enemies, and they never have been. Even when they hurt each other, even when it just plain _hurts_.

And you know why.

 

“Frisk,” you say aloud in the upstairs hallway; your hands say another name. “I _love you_ ,” you gesture, adding an extra shake or two for good measure. “It’s _okay_.” An extra nod. You hold out your arms, and their face cracks open, falls apart. They slump into your arms, and you both crumple down to sit a while. You hear the memory of soft lullabies, see your own ghost snatching them up greedily, so desperate for closeness, feeling outside everyone and everything, feeling _outside yourself_. You hold them closer because you know how it feels.

Tears escape your lids as Frisk sobs; their songs also belong to you now.

You know Frisk and Sans love each other. You’re inside yourself; you know how to love them, too. You weep because it hurts so much to care, the unfamiliar and exquisite agony of having something to lose running like poison in your blood, racing towards your heart. How could you let this happen? How did you find yourself with a family again, after already losing nearly everything, after losing _yourself_? After throwing away what was left, telling yourself it was for the best?

You weep because you’re afraid.

Hope infests your soul; it _stings_.

You hold it tighter.

 

“Do you ever think about what Sans sees when he looks at you?” You ask Grillby absently, then flinch when you hear what you’ve just said. There really is something about him, about this place, that leads you to say more than you intended, reveal and ask more of yourself and others than you would anywhere else. Or maybe it’s just the fact that he already answered, so you might as well ask.

 

You’re glad you decided to move your newer couch into your room at the skeleton household, because you don’t actually need a bed with it here. Not that you hadn’t slept on your old sofa plenty of times, but this one’s just slightly more forgiving on your joints. It’s dark and quiet, and Frisk’s not even snoring tonight. Or who knows, maybe they’re not here. Maybe they went to Endogeny’s. Sans is busy tonight, and every once in a while you hear the faintest possible rustle from the living room, where Papyrus is presumably watching his shows with his personal speakers.

You wanted the chance to get used to the idea of ‘staying over’ on your own, rather than doing so for a specific reason, even the reason of wanting to spend time with Sans. Trying it out just for you, just because _you_ want to. And yeah...you’re having some trouble sleeping. Maybe it’s because you just asked Grillby a really awkward question without meaning to, or maybe it’s just because it’s your first night in a new room, even though it’s far from your first overnight stay in this house...or even your hundredth, maybe. You’ve been over here a lot this summer, and now it’s almost over.

 

It’s Wednesday, and you forgot to wear shoes to work. It’s impressive how few people have noticed so far, but you sit outside on the rim of the planter and send Sans a text message asking if he’ll bring them for you. He does, even though he was probably asleep, based on his face when he arrives with them.

“Awww, were you asleep? You didn’t have to do it if you were asleep.”

He just shrugs and shakes his head, holding out your sandals.

“You brought those ones so you wouldn’t have to watch me put on socks in public, didn’t you?”

He gives you the same reaction, but you know you’re right. It makes you giggle.

“I’ll make it up to you,” you add, giving him a sultry look. “I promise.”

 

Sleep might also be evading you since you keep on rubbing your chest, and you feel a bit unsettled because this week’s happening out of order. Maybe it’s because you’ve been skipping some of your normally scheduled appointments with Vulkin. You’d started asking for hugs again during the two months that had happened in one second, but tapered them off to just the ones for your chronic stuff since you’d _thought_ it was over with, but...this is more than the usual amount of temporal fuckery you’ve grown accustomed to. It’s kind of inconvenient to have to do all your soul touching on a schedule, because it takes so long a lot of the time. It’d be so much easier if you could just…

Hmm. If you could just do it on your own. But the whole “defend yourself more” experiment had been so awful, you haven’t wanted to inquire about whatever thing makes you able to take out your own soul, even though at this point you’re pretty sure it’d be a massive upgrade in the convenience department. Like, if you could just do it now, that’d be both convenient and… settling. Might even help you sleep, maybe get this stupid week back the way it’s supposed to be. You wonder how it’d feel to take it out yourself. When Sans coaxes it out of you, it feels awesome and sexy and intense; when Vulkin takes it out you don’t feel that way at all, even after she leaves. That has never really come into it, even though you’ve definitely gotten the impression that monsters take out their own souls for all sorts of reasons, all of them very much their own personal business.

One of yours and Sans’s meandering sexytime talks had involved him telling you about how he takes his soul out on his own often, especially when he’s not doing so great and can’t be with other people like he prefers to be when he’s having a hard time. Part of why he’s good at touching other people’s souls is because he knows what he likes, knows how it makes him feel when he does it to himself. You smile thinking of how you’d known what kind of touch he’d wanted on his body that time he’d shared his genitalia with you, because of the outward motion he’d made with his fingers that you’ve seen him make in his soul, that you’ve felt in yours. But your soul’s different than his, and you don’t have any magic to put in there even if you wanted to.

But what if you wanted to take your soul out for sexy reasons anyways? It seems unfair that you can’t. You rub at your chest petulantly, since that’s where everyone seems to touch you when they’re asking your soul to come out. Asking. That’s what they're doing, right? They have to ask it to come out, ask its permission. They can’t just yank it out of you without that; you know it now that you’re thinking about it. It’s a certain kind of permission though, not one you can really think about. It’s just something you feel… a question you _feel_ the answer to.

 

“You really don’t leave here?” you ask, although you know the answer. It’s really just giving him an opening to talk about it some more, since he obviously wants to. And to show him you give a crap.

… _It’s not safe. For myself and others,_ _as well as_ _property and landscaping._ That flickering grin again. _…It was the same in the underground; th_ _is situation is_ _not new._ _These are the circumstances of the life I have_ _ **chosen**_ _, a_ _nd as I have said, I am happy with them._

You look around the bar; sunlight still filters in weakly through the few windows. A dog or two have wandered in at some point without you noticing, but they seem to be having some sort of intense conversation in one of the corner booths. They don’t order anything and Grillby doesn’t acknowledge them; there really don’t seem to be many rules here. Or at least, not ones like that.

You see Grillby flicker-fiddle with something out of the corner of your eye, and softly jangling music begins to fill the space.

_Happiness hit her like a train on a track…  
Coming towards her, stuck still no turning back… _

You can see Sans’s slippers but not much else from this angle; the barstools are taller than the booths anyhow, and he’s still under the table with Lola. The weeping sounds have ceased, replaced with soft murmurs instead.

Papyrus and Sans love each other very much, but living with Papyrus involves a lot of rules. Despite their arbitrary and mercurial nature, they’re in place to make it possible for him to function, and you’ve never sensed any resentment on the part of either Sans or Frisk. You don’t mind them either. Papyrus’s frequent and easily expressed annoyance underscores the way he never really gets angry; he yells all the time, which emphasizes the fact that he’s almost never really yelling. You think about milkshakes, because even Papyrus needs a break from Papyrus sometimes. Maybe especially.

_She hid around corners and she hid under beds_  
_She killed it with kisses and from it she fled_  
_With every bubble she sank with a drink_  
_And washed it away down the kitchen sink_

There really aren’t those kind of rules here. You’ve seen it yourself, because you spend a lot of time here. You can sleep in the booths, you can ask to go in the back. You might not get permission, but you can always ask. You can be loud and messy, laugh and cry, even throw things as long as they don’t hurt anyone. You can stand on a table and talk to everyone at once, or you can hide under the table so no one can see you at all. You can take a nap in the middle of the dance floor, while people practically having sex standing up trip and fall over you, and your significant other uses you like a pillow.

You think the people talking in the booth might be breaking up with each other.

 _happiness hit her like a bullet in the back_  
_struck from a great height_  
_by someone who should know better than that_

“This is your cookout,” you say admiringly after a few minutes.

… _Yes, it is._

 

Something about Grillby’s really makes it easier to ask questions, to feel comfortable, to be yourself with yourself, despite or because of the presence of others. You wiggle a little under your blanket, snuggle more into your wide, soft-yet supportive sofa, feeling happy and comfortable that same way in your room. And it really is yours, isn’t it? It _feels_ like yours, feels like a space of your own. Maybe because the first thing you’d ever done here was touch your soul, hold yourself accountable, agree to do better, and get a better handle on what you want and who you are.

Because we are who we are to _ourselves_ before we are who we are to anyone else, right?

This is where we begin. We know we exist because we _feel_ it, and we know. _You_ know.

You’re right here, aren’t you.

You exhale tight, soft with awe as your soul emerges and bathes you in its dark blue light-that-isn’t, its deep midnight light-that-is. It’s both, isn’t it. And so are you: inside yourself looking out, outside yourself looking in. Loving, forgiving, exploring and nurturing. It never occurred to you that maybe all you had to do was just ask yourself, give yourself permission. Not until it did, and you did. But now you have, and it’s good. You’re _right_ _here_ and everything’s okay. You smile into yourself softly, wipe a tear.

Aren’t you something.

Nothing like getting in touch with yourself, is there?

 

You open the back door, which exists along the wall of Frisk’s downstairs den now, just in time for the near-black clouds overhead to break open and drench the pallet of couch cushions you haven’t had the energy to bring in yet. The rain throwing itself violently into the ground lifts a much cooler rush of air than you expected, reminding you that time passes even when it doesn’t pass the way it’s supposed to. The doorframe holds you immobile for a long moment as you’re suddenly poured back into yourself, sliding with an ominous click into the here and now. You rub your chest absently, frowning a little. A deep shiver comes up from your depths as rain cools your skin. Wormlike damp and mud spatters your ankles, you smell petrichor and wet wool, hear the lilting harp and flitting trills of the song from the bar.

_the dog days are over_

_the dog days are done_

_the horses are coming_

_so_

_you_

_better_

_run_


	38. that sink-ing feeling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this goes sideways. brace yourself.
> 
> [slight body horror, panic]
> 
>  
> 
> [Passenger - Feather on the Clyde](https://youtu.be/tTV259Iyr4w)

“You are _really_ on to something with this, Sans.” You lean up, hit the switch on the fairy lights stuck up on the underside of the roof of your king-sized blanket fort. Nothing like breaking in a new room in an empty house: Frisk’s staying with Toriel, and Papyrus is Out.

“hmmm.” He just stuffs his skull right up your shirt and lets it hang there like a cotton hammock, rubbing his smooth-and-textured face all over your belly, then your chest as you shimmy back down.

“I’m dead serious,” you pant, giggling breathlessly. “You can’t get this kind of ambience anywhere else. We need to set this up somewhere and charge people rent. PopUp Fuck Tent, 80G an hour. We’ll be... um… mmm…” You peek down into the stretched-down neck of your own shirt, watching the top of his head as he growls into your skin playfully. You shimmy down even more, pull the neckband out and now you’re both sort of wearing your comically oversized, extremely soft t-shirt like a two headed skullhuman.

“i’ll spend it all at grillby’s,” Sans sighs as you push your thigh in between his femurs. “m’ never gonna cook again.” You make a little noise as he nips you unexpectedly, then he slides his arms around your waist and shoves his pubic arch up into your leg with a soft grunt. It’s a little hotter there than you expected even through his clothes, and you wonder if maybe something else decided to show up. Well, you won’t acknowledge it until he does; you’ve decided that’s generally how you plan to handle his intermittent genitals and his mixed feelings about them.

It’s worked out well so far, and he’s shared it once since the first time. That time you really couldn’t say what kind of genitalia it had been, but you’d been overjoyed Sans had let you kiss and lick it while he played with his soul and made some of the best noises you’ve ever heard. Eventually he’d smiled and told you he was satisfied, then he’d coaxed you out as well. You’d ended up touching each other’s souls, petting and nuzzling for a long, long time, then put them back and gone to sleep all wrapped up in each other snug and tight. Every moment had been absolutely lovely.

Thinking about it now both slows your roll and revs you up, and you find yourself pulling the shirt off...well, more like pulling you both out of the tentlike shirt, but still. You fold him into your arms, then you both sit up to hold each other better, closer. You kiss all along his jaw, rub your face on his. He tucks his finger into your waistband and leans back to glance at you. You grin and nod; both of you get bare quickly, end up kneeling facing each other to hug and touch with deep, satisfied sighs.

“So...I had something I wanted to show you,” you say, glancing to the side. Sans looks extremely interested as you wriggle up and into his lap, which comes into existence as he leans back against the pillows shoved against the bookshelf to pad it nicely. There might be a little shadow of something thinking about taking shape in his pelvis, but you let your eyes move on since he hasn’t said anything about it, and you’re doing something else right now anyways. He puts his arms around your waist, then runs his hard, flexible palms up your back a little, down again. Their residual coolness and smooth, alien texture make you sigh and shudder gently.

“I figured it out,” you whisper bashfully, and wait for him to realize what you mean as you touch your chest with questing fingers. “I don’t know if I can make it come out in front of someone else yet, but...I’d like to try.”

His sockets go round, and he literally gasps. It’s rather gratifying.

“you’re gonna take yourself out for me?” he pants faintly. "you want me to see you?"

You blush. “If I can...yeah.”

“that’s real exciting,” he whispers fervently as he gazes up at you, the points in his sockets dilating and changing texture. You exhale shakily, because his bedroom talk really does it for you. There’s something about his combination of fervent cursing, complimentary observations, and utterly ingenuous statements like that one that blend into an incredibly seductive experience. It’s astounding how someone with so many layers of protective deflections, avoidant behaviors, and ways of giving considerably less than his honest opinion on just about anything manages to turn that around so completely once you get him in bed.

It’s all right there on his face, in his voice. He says exactly how he feels, practically narrates his thoughts even when you’re not touching him, even when you’re not feeling and knowing. He gives everything he has, always. He’s _exquisite_. It took him a long time to be willing to get there, and you’re still pretty amazed it worked out at all, if you’re honest. But you’re so very, very glad it did, and that you get to share this with him. He shivers under you, and you hear the faint susurration of clacks from deep inside him as he gazes up at you, enraptured.

“whatever you’re thinking, i’m pretty sure i like it,” he whispers, rubbing your hips with his thumbs encouragingly. “can’t get enough of looking at you, you know that?”

You wrap your arm around his shoulders, lean in with your hand on your chest and set your forehead against his. Stare into his sockets with a sigh.

“I can’t get enough of you looking at me, either,” you whisper sincerely as he nudges against you gently, holds you close.

“so nice being here with you,” he whispers with a little shiver. “all safe and warm. jus’ wanna look at you all day, stay right here with you.” He pulls your hips forward a little, then tents his knees up so you can lean back into his femurs if you want to. Not yet, though...instead you lean in to press your chests together with your hand in between, calling and feeling yourself. It _is_ nice being here with him, like nothing outside your little tent exists. He puts his face into your neck as you lean into him, keeps whispering.

“you know i woulda still felt this way about you even if you never wanted this with me? even if you couldn’t show me, never let me touch you like that. you were so scared...” he adds, voice throbbing with emotion as he rubs the circle between your shoulderblades that you love, that you want to feel every day for the rest of your life. You moan against him, the way his words make you feel drawing at you.

This is different, isn’t it? It makes you _feel_ different to be the one showing him, to present yourself to him this way. You shiver with willing vulnerability, with the arousal the trust between you kindles until it’s bright and quivering.

“i’ll never forget the first time you let me see you… i’ll never forget _every_ time,” he continues fervently. “s’like the way you look at me, but it’s right there inside you for me to look at instead. you got any idea what that does to me?” he cries softly into your neck, rubbing his face as his breathing deepens. There’s warmth in his lap beneath you, and his body’s a little tense as he hugs and caresses you; talking about the way you love each other turns him on, and that really does something to _you_ , doesn’t it? “wouldn’t matter, though. i’d still wanna be here with you jus’ like this, holding you and loving you, being real lazy together... feeling good with you...”

You lean back, and he supports you with his hands on your upper back, lower back resting on his femurs. You pull your hand back with a shaky exhale, and it works because you can’t wait to show him how this makes you feel, can you? He sees it; you hear his tiny noise, you see his sockets change shape, magic flowing already as the way you feel about him burbles up to show itself. You might not be able to see it in his, but you can always see this in yours. Dark blue and convoluted, hiding and revealing, all of a piece and full of contradictions. It’s you, and you want him to see you, want to share yourself with him.

“love that you let me see you,” he moans, squeezing your shoulders with his hard, smooth fingers. “love that you want to, love how it makes you feel.” He pants a little roughly, shifts his hips.

“Will you let me see you, too?” you whisper, and he groans and shivers.

He looks up at your face like that’s the most surprising and best idea he’s ever heard in his life; it’s how he always looks when you ask. “yeah,” he pants softly, and you wipe a drop of magic out of the groove beneath his socket, rub it into your thigh; he sees it and moans again. His legs straighten, and you move back a little as he kneels up too. The cushions you put on the floor and laid blankets over make this a lot easier on both of you, and being in an unusual position is pretty exciting, too. He lets out a shuddering exhale as he sees it in you, and you stroke each other’s upper arms as his fingers clack over his chest lightly.

His breathing deepens again, and his fingers slide up your shoulder, come up behind your neck as he leans in towards you. Sets his frontal bone against you, caresses your neck soothingly as he presses your foreheads together.

“wanted to tell you a little secret,” he whispers, and groans raggedly as he watches what it does to you. Curious, thrilled, just a tinge of harmless transgression and excitement. “i know you can’t see what i feel when you look in me, but...” he exhales shakily, fingers rasping gentle and insistent over ribs and sternum.

“it still feels so _good_ to me when you watch,” he rasps, then brings himself out with a grunt and a shiver as he squeezes the back of your neck gently. He pants as you both look down at yourselves, then he’s touching himself gently, middle distal phalanx curving into the cleft underneath with another soft groan. “even better when you watch me touchin it, s’why i can’t ever wait,” he admits, shivering again as he watches what it does to you, what it does to him.

“dunno why it feels so good,” he sighs, “dunno why it’s different, either. never felt anything like this before in my _life_ ,” he pants low and rough, closing his sockets briefly. He catches his breath, then rolls his forehead up so you look into his sockets as he opens them again, tearing your gaze away to trace your face with his nasal bone delicately. “you make me feel so many things… feel so good, all the time. dunno how you do it. never want you to stop, though.”

“Me too,” you reply, voice cracking a little. “I never thought I could feel like this. I… didn’t even know I wanted to.” Deep, soft yearning fills you; you touch yourself with a sigh. You both look down again; he can see what you want there, but you have to ask him what he wants unless you touch. It’s okay. You like asking, you like hearing him say it, telling you what he likes. Asking for different kinds of touches, kissing, holding. And you like asking him for what you want, too.

“Will you touch me?”

“yeah,” he breathes.

“Can we do it together?”

“ _yeah_ ,” he sighs, already taking your hands into his. “you wanna do it all at once?” he suggests, rubbing his face into your neck. His teeth are hot, and so is his breath.

“Oh fuck,” you answer, leaning your head forward onto his shoulder as he slips your fingers between his. “I sure do.”

He’s moaning already, breathing a lot more heavily than usual when you touch each other this way. Hmm. It might be because he’s physically turned on; his legs are even shaking a bit as he kneels with you. He’s certainly aroused enough that there’s _definitely_ something going on with his pelvis right now, you notice when you glance down. He moves your hands and his around your souls, cupping and curving in. “you ready?” he pants raggedly, and the catch in his voice is really doing it for you.

“I can’t wait,” you moan.

“me either,” he groans roughly, trembling the words out along with his hot breath over your lips. “here it comes,” he promises, and then it does.

At first you think the sound you hear is the shattering of glass, remembered from the bowling alley. Then you realize it’s not bowl _ing_ , it’s the sound of a thin ceramic _bowl_ shattering in a deep, empty sink. Alphys’s bowl. But you hadn’t been there to hear that, and that’s when you realize you’re not the one hearing it.

That’s Sans, and he’s hearing the sound of the last time his hand had slipped.

Well. The last time before just now.

And you’re hearing it as much as you can around Sans’s instantaneous, all-encompassing yet utterly silent climax; then you realize that it’s also yours, because that’s pretty much the same thing right now. You both take the same exact deep, shuddering breath; neither of you knows what this is or how to stop it. His hand had slipped, it was _an accident_ … and now something's happening, and just...keeps happening. You (it’s a collective sort of ‘you’ now, isn’t it? You and he, that sort of ‘you’) use each others bodies to hug gently, comforting each other as best you can until whatever this is finishes happening. You’d be very frightened (oh...you _are_ frightened, you’re both fucking terrified- it’s just pushed to the edges) if it wasn’t for the fact that soothing, calm magic’s rushing out into your joined souls, and the fact that at least you’re not alone.

You’re not alone.

It would be so much worse if you were alone.

You’re just as aware of your arm around his shoulders, your face tucked under his jaw and forehead against his vertebrae as you are of what your own warm skin feels like when it touches bones. In fact, you know what it feels like to be made of bones and magic. You know how it feels to have blood, to have a heart beating in your chest. You know what it feels like to have a tongue pressing against the roof of your mouth, how strange and thick it feels to have flesh holding you together. You feel what it’s like to understand everywhere at once, and you know what the sun looks like from the inside.

Something’s _happening_ with the rush of magic now, and it feels extremely good. So there’s that. You’re not happy about it, but it’s not like you (you and he, a collective sort of you) can do anything about it, either. You take a deep breath with one ribcage that expands and one that doesn’t. It feels primal, or…primordial… it’s like something that exists before memory, before time.

Timeless, like the inside of souls and skulls.

This bus _shouldn’t_ be driving itself, but it is. It can’t be stopped, and it doesn’t care what either of you think about it. It didn’t ask, it won’t wait, and there’s nothing you can do except let it finish.

It’s just something that’s happening to you.

It feels good, right?

Are bad things allowed to feel good?

Are they supposed to?

Bones cradle hot flesh gently, lie down to get even closer. Closer yet closer, until hands falls away with a final deep rush of magic; now bodies press together, and the same fearful, desperate whine escapes each. Just enough panic tears through the suffocating haze that each body uses only itself for this part; then the same uncontrollable, ecstatically satisfied moan is torn from a throat that is, and one that isn’t. The ethereal bluish glow of a joined soul dims and disappears; a few moments after that it finally separates.

Sans lurches up and scrambles off you; you get up right away and clutch his magic-drenched hand. You both sit heavily, breathing in tandem still as you stare at each other, dumbfounded and terrified. The hands you’re holding start to shake at the same time; both the points in his sockets and your eyes are dulled by fear and euphoria.

You don’t have to ask. Neither of you had _made_ that happen, and neither of you know why it did. His hand had _slipped_ ; that had been an _accident;_ you both know it beyond doubt. But the rest of it… was the thing monsters do with each other when they might want to make another monster, or are okay with the possibility. You haven’t ever done that before and neither has he, but you’re pretty _goddamn_ sure-

“it is _not_ supposed to be like that.” Sans’s whisper is tight and frightened.

Then he makes a strange, congested noise. His phalanges clatter against his sternum, and magic flows from his sockets. He ignores it, stares hard at nothing but now each of you is breathing in your own pattern. You notice your hand’s clasped over your mouth, and tears run over it. You ignore them, try to ignore the shared terror and pleasure that’s been stuffed into both of you along with his magic. It doesn’t feel the same as it usually does, but you don’t know why and you can’t think right now.

You don’t know why that happened.

“i don’t know why that happened,” he whispers tightly, “i didn’t _want_ to-” he interrupts himself with another coughing noise, and it doesn’t sound good. “i think something’s wrong with me now,” he pants, eye lights pinned and dim. You grip his hand hard, trying again to think. But you can’t really, because you’re panicking.

“feels weird.” His other hand clatters against his chest again, a fingertip hooks into his intercostal space, as if he’s trying to pluck at something. Almost as if…

“Is there something in there?” You hear your voice shake out. You pull your hand down from your mouth, but you don’t know what to do with it now. It just hovers there, reaching toward him without point or purpose.

“Do you need help?”

His breathing sounds dense and strange as he frowns, his thoughts quick and sharp even through the haze of fear that’s palpable at this point; the creeping, cold wave of the way he feels when he’s not-okay. His hand squeezes yours, trembling like a smooth, hard leaf. You don’t know how his breathing works, considering he has no lungs, or throat, or...all you know is it sounds bad. Sounds like he said; like something’s wrong. Your extended hand shakes uncontrollably so you close it, lower it as a fist that you rest on your thigh.

He coughs, and it sounds _wet_.

“it… it’s gotta come out,” he whispers thickly, like he’s come to a realization of some kind. His fingers curl and pluck at his chest again, and he frowns like he’s trying to figure something out.

“You...you _know where it is_ ,” you hiss hopefully. “Since you know w-where it is,” you pant, voice gaining strength, “you know how to take it out, right?” You squeeze his hand again as he spasms, hacking wetly. He takes a deep breath, coughs, tries to speak. It doesn’t sound good; his voice makes an odd rustle, and he lets out a clearing growl before he speaks again.

“...yeah. yeah, i think so,” he rasps, then squeezes your fingers before letting them go.

Your other fist joins the first, and you pull them up to your chest anxiously as you both sit on your heels facing each other. He tilts his head down, staring very hard at nothing. His eye lights brighten and contract as both his hands rasp questioningly over his sternum.

“okay,” he croaks, and then his hands change shape. He takes another deep breath, lets out one more cough, then his hands draw back as he scowls in concentration.

A blob of something that looks liquid and glows sheer silver follows them.

He makes a dry, retching noise you’ve never heard before when he sees it; his eye lights disappear.

Your voice is tiny, terrified. “What is it?”

He doesn’t breathe; he stares at nothing.

_**I forgot.** _

Sans makes a quiet, hopeless keening noise, over and over like a lost child.

_**I forgot.** _


	39. not eggxactly sure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Pete Yorn- Strange Condition](https://youtu.be/AbjEiDDY0Kc)

Alphys is sweating.

“I’ve got good news, neutral news, weird news, and bad news,” she signs eventually, ticking off the points against her hand. “What do you want first?”

You rub your forehead for a solid thirty seconds, giving Sans’s fingerbones a final squeeze before lifting your hands to reply.

“Just go in that order,” you instruct, resigned.

“Well, the good news is that this was never going to be a person or anything like that. And the reason for that is the neutral news because, well, I know you,” she gestures, meeting Sans’s eyes for a second before continuing. “After looking at this from every angle I could think of, I’m relatively confident telling you that you’re infertile.

“well, you’re right in that it’s not bad news for sure, but...how can ya know that?”

“Because everything that would have caused this to turn into something living happened, and it’s not,” she replies adamantly.

You stare blankly, so she glances at Sans, then starts signing at you faster than you think you’ve ever seen anyone go in your life.

“When monsters’s souls are condensed and exposed, then subsequently merged, one or more partners can use their magic as a catalyst to cause an additional soul to germinate in one or more of the merged souls. Depending on various factors, this often results in the birth of another monster either immediately or after a certain amount of time. Of course, for a few monsters, they can do this themselves without actually needing another soul to merge with. Sans _isn’t_ one of them.” She shakes her fingers, the equivalent of a deep breath before continuing. This time she addresses Sans.

“Your magic is not catalytic in that way, even when another soul is condensed, exposed, and merged; it does something else instead. I don’t know why. Your magic’s inert in the sense that it can’t reproduce, it can only...well, _produce_. You and I spent all that time looking at your soul, but we never looked at your body in that way. And in retrospect, we really _should_ have,” she continues, frowning a little.

She looks like she’s really having a hard time explaining this, and Sans is flipping through the folder she’d handed him with a disturbed look on his face. You’re not as lost as you could be, but it’s still…

“What’s the weird news?” you ask finally, since it doesn’t seem like Sans is going to.

“It’s not alive, but it has potential,” she says uncertainly.

“It has the...potential… To be alive?”

“No,” she clarifies quickly, “but it has the potential to be absorbed _by_ something alive. It’s...powerful, but not...like a drug, more like….”

You think furiously as Alphys trails off. What Sans’s soul had made was something that could have been alive if it had been...fertilized? Not exactly, but maybe it’s something similar? But it hadn’t been because he can’t, and you’re human so you can’t either.

“Are you saying...” you speak aloud, voice sounding tight and unfamiliar even to your ears. “...it’s like an, an _egg_?”

Alphys’s face drifts out of tune, and she looks disturbingly thoughtful for a moment.

Sans silently shuts the folder, tosses it on the ground in front of him before reaching in his pocket. When he pulls it out, one of the larger reused bottles is in it.

He takes off the cap and the smell of citrus-pine fills the room.

“I made Sans lay an egg?” you repeat faintly.

He sets it to his teeth and tips his head back sharply, letting it glug out as Alphys continues.

“N-no. It’s not an _egg_ ,” she winces, speaking aloud since Sans’s sockets are shut. “It’s d-definitely n-not _food_ , either. It’s a...liquid, technically. It’s like…”

She frowns, Sans glugs, and you wait impatiently for Alphys to figure out how to explain this.

“S-soul power is what brought the b-b-barrier down,” she says. “That’s w-what it took. W-what Sans’s b-body turned his magic into while you w-were merged is like that kind of p-p-power, but without eve _r having been_ an actual _s-soul_.”

Sans finally finishes the bottle of monster liquor, and just tosses the empty into the corner of the room. His sockets are black and empty.

“ _why_ would i be able to do that with them, though? humans n monsters _can’t have kids_.”

Alphys flinches, as if she was hoping he wouldn’t ask her that.

“The fact that anything h-happened at all means you would be able to reproduce with h-h-humans, except you’d d-do it the way m-m-monsters do. _I_ _f_ your magic w-was catalytic,” she replies reluctantly. “Monsters, too, since you h-have a monster’s soul. B-but monsters c-c-can’t make _this_ happen to you. It h-has to do with the t-t-traits. It w-would...nothing would happen, in that case.”

“what _the fuck am i_ , alphie?” he croaks dully.

“Just because we have a better idea of how you work, it doesn’t bring us any closer to knowing what you are, exactly,” she signs, now that his eye lights are present. Barely. He rasps his fingers over his face several times, runs distal phalanges along his grin. It hurts your chest to watch it.

“this just how i am? or am i...sick?”

Alphys closes her eyes a moment. When she opens them, she looks at the floor.

“I have no way to know that right now. I’m sorry.”

He slumps.

“so what’s the bad news?” he asks after a minute.

She lifts her glasses from her snout a moment, digs underneath with a delicate claw tip.

“It has the potential to become part of a soul without actually being one,” she gestures unhappily. “That’s the kind of absorption I’m talking about.”

“why’s it _bad_ ,” he continues flatly.

She sighs heavily, eyes darting away before returning to meet his sockets squarely.

“B-because it’s exactly what I n-need to be able to d-d-do what Frisk _wants_ me to d-do,” she says aloud. She looks like she already regrets what she’s going to say.

“It’s raw material.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear this seemed so much less weird before i actually wrote it down? To clarify: it is...not an egg.
> 
> [aaanyhoo if you need more and/or a break from. um. this. i have a sidefic chapter about what happened the first time Sans had sex. It's with Grillby.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17952167/chapters/42971816)
> 
> You can read that fic from the beginning if you want to know how they ended up getting to that point. ;)


	40. 8 Days A Week

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Alanis Morissette - You Learn](https://youtu.be/vZPJYEAf4Mg)

[misgendering]

*8 left

Sans is not-okay and possibly sick, your sister’s moving tomorrow, _you’re_ moving tomorrow, you’re trying to hide things from Frisk with variable success, and you have a fucking _head cold_.

Because of course you do.

You can’t sleep, so you and Sans just hold each other for now… hopefully when he finally loosens up enough to fall asleep he’ll take you with him. You’re doing your best not to cough, because when you do it reminds you of the congested noises Sans had made when The Thing had happened.

Neither of you are feeling particularly okay with or about The Thing. Or The Stuff, either.

But there’s also nothing you can do about it at the moment, and way too much of everything _else_ to do.

That’s the worst part about times of crisis. Everything else just keeps on going with or without your participation, and there’s always something that needs taken care of. You can’t just drop everything and deal with it, because some things are too important to let them hit the ground.

Asses need wiping, furniture needs moving, and _not_ doing those things won’t make Sans remember what he is, where he comes from, why that had happened, whatever the hell that silver liquid really is, and whether or not he’s having any other ill effects.

You’re in bed at your apartment, since your sister’s back at her place for a week finalizing the move stuff on their end, much to the protest of her possibly soon-to-be-ex-husband. You’d discussed it and come to the conclusion that if Angie and the kids move in with you, you’re going to need a bigger place. Based on his attitude and from what Ange has said, it’s probably best to go ahead as if Matt’s not coming so you’ve picked out a four bedroom place from among the campus housing options. Now all that’s left is to get all of you into the new place before the weather gets too cold. It’ll be more expensive, but you can afford it on your own anyhow, and besides that you figure you’ll finally be able to prove to her she doesn’t need to worry about her own options as much as she has been.

 _You’re_ still worried, though. Everything’s stressful, and you can’t relax. You also can’t breathe out of your nose.

“If there was any justice in the world, chronically ill people would be granted immunity to the plebeian illnesses,” you mumble resentfully, and Sans quirks a socket at you. “I mean, I’ve got all this shit that took years of getting dicked around to diagnose, some that don’t even have treatments, or the treatment’s worse than the symptoms. At least the human treatments are. Getting a fucking head cold is just an _insult_. Like getting hit by a car and then having someone come over and slap you.”

He smiles softly, soothed by your complaining. If you’re feeling good enough to complain, you’re likely starting to get better.

He’s been quiet lately, and you know that’s probably not a good thing. He’s twice as talkative as his brother, after all. He’s been stuck to you like a bony barnacle when you’re not at work ever since The Thing happened, but lot of the time when you look at him he seems kind of distant around the sockets, even though he doesn’t look like he’s thinking about anything in particular. That also might not be a good sign, but you’re not totally sure on that one.

“I’m still feeling pretty soul-shy,” you say softly after a little while of touching and looking at each other, thinking your own thoughts and trying to catch good vibes. It’s sort of working. “How about you?”

He nods, smiling sadly.

“Yeah,” you sigh, then lean up to blow your nose for the four hundredth time before laying back down. The bedroom lights are off, but plenty of streetlight’s coming in through the open curtains. It makes his skull almost seem to glow softly, cool-white and ethereal on the pillow. You’ll miss seeing him in like this, but there’s be other ways and other things. You squash down weird thoughts trying to scream at you that he’s sick, he might be dying and you don’t know if you’re having any- there we go. Squash-squash. It’s time to _sleep_ , not freak yourself out til you piss the bed. You breathe evenly, try and smile encouragingly. “We’ll get there. It’s too bad, though. It might’ve helped us sleep.”

He exhales, almost managing to sound amused. “...yeah. if i don’t sleep soon, m’ gonna have to have paps do his thing.” You smile and caress his arm; you’re glad he’s keeping tabs on that at least. He doesn’t always. And he does _need_ to sleep, even though plenty of monsters don’t.

“you want me to touch you?” he offers. You’re getting better at reading from context; he doesn’t mean your soul. He means the other way.

You shake your head. “I’m not in the mood. Too congested.” He gives you an exhausted smile of commiseration, and something else occurs to you. He needs sleep maybe even more than you do. Although you don’t know if he can get in the mood for that right now either in addition to it being a sensitive topic, maybe you should broach it anyhow. You don’t really know how his magic forms genitalia, but his soul doesn’t need to be involved for that to happen.

“What about you?” you offer in return.

A look flickers across his face that you can’t really read, and he looks down and shakes his head.

“What is it?”

He just shakes his head again.

“I mean. I hate to press you but it’s even more important that we talk if we’re not getting...um. On the same page other ways.”

He looks thoughtful at that, which is good since you know you’re right.

“i was just thinking maybe my hand slipped cause… when that happens to me, i get real agitated sometimes. impatient.”

“We both know that wasn’t anyone’s fault, Sans.”

He shrugs.

“alphie told me her and undyne did that a few times. not the...they didn’t push any magic in. jus’ the other part. but i know we shoulda been able to _stop_ , and i don’t know why we couldn’t.”

“I don’t know either.” You’ve had several versions of this exchange already, but it helps to have it again anyhow. Sans’s health issues are upsetting enough, but just as disturbing for both of you had been having a sexual experience neither of you had had before, and neither of you had actually consented to, either. It was like you were under some sort of mind control or something, but there can be no doubt he hadn’t been trying to do that, and neither had you. It’s extraordinarily fucked up when you think about it, so you’ve been trying not to. He’s probably been doing the same, but at some point you’ll probably have to talk about the implications of that, too.

“Do you know of anyone who’s done that with a human? I mean… if it’s safe to do that...wouldn’t people want to?”

“dunno. haven’t heard of anyone doing that, though. and i asked around a while back, too.” He gets a little iridescent at that, and it brings a smile to your face. No matter how shitty things feel, he always finds a way to make you smile, make you interested, make you think. You decide to take your own advice and share those thoughts.

“You know...it just occurred to me that ever since we started having sex...we kind of use it as a catch-all way to make ourselves and each other feel better. Like a shortcut for intimacy.” He frowns a little, then looks surprised and thoughtful. “There are others ways to do that, though. We used to do that stuff before, and we’re doing it again now, right?” His face gets soft. “Laying together, just talking and thinking. And it’s not like we weren’t dealing with heavy shit then, too.”

“mm hmm,” he agrees, letting his sockets slip partly shut. You wiggle closer despite your stuffy head, and lay your head in the middle of his chest so it’s elevated slightly. His bones smush your ear between them and your own head, so you shift a little until you find a comfortable spot for it. There we go.

“Will you sing to me? Like you do with Frisk sometimes. Or is that weird?”

“nah,” he replies, rubbing your arm up and down, giving your shoulders a squeeze, “s’not weird.” He huffs a soft laugh. “can’t say you don’t know what you’re getting into, though. not exactly classically trained over here.”

“Do you need your phone?”

“nah. frisk jus’ likes to watch the lyrics. got any requests?”

“Surprise me.”

He does, more than you expected. His deep rumble’s still a little flat and doesn’t always manage to follow the melody exactly… but you still recognize the song. You’ve never told him, but apparently he noticed even though his slow nods are usually done with eyes averted.

You wipe tears away, not minding even though it’s not doing anything great for your congestion. When he finishes you tilt your head up, and his eye lights shrink.

“shit… sorry,” he whispers. “i didn’t think.”

“No, don’t be. It was perfect.” you lean up to blow your nose for the four hundredth and first time. “That was her favorite song. She...was the last person who sang it to me, actually. You noticed it on the urn?”

He nods cautiously, still looking like he feels like he put his foot in it. “Sans. It means a lot to me that you sang me that song. Especially now. Just...the fact that you saw that the design is actually notes, read them and knew what song it was… not a lot of people would notice something like that.” You curl up into his arms, locking together like commas, tucked into bed with the streetlight shining in, puffy warm blankets above and a soft mattress below.

“notes are like numbers,” he whispers quietly. He’s got a point. “notice more than i used to since i been with you,” he adds after a little while. “maybe i care more than i used to, too.”

“I’m glad,” you whisper back, pull him closer. He falls asleep and takes you with him, but it’s fitful on both your parts, and you wake up still exhausted.

 

* 7 left

 

You and Matt stare at each other squarely.

“I just don’t want his life to be harder than it _has_ to be. I don’t know why you all think that makes me some kind of villain!”

Wow. Apparently he’s decided to let it all hang out now that it’s over. He hasn’t referred to Nattie as “him” for almost two years, but it seems it’s just been simmering under the surface, waiting to come out. Maybe it’s meant to make a point to you about his basic consideration being conditional, which is just as bad. Doubly so.

“The world’s changing, Matt,” you reply bluntly. “Are you going to help it get better, or are you going to fight to keep it the same shitty way it is now? Make your own kid suffer to keep it shitty? Because that’s what you’re doing.”

He doesn’t like that, does he. Well, it doesn’t matter, since you’re not trying to convince him of anything. You’re trying to get him to stop fighting with everyone, or at the very least just fucking _leave_. He’s trying to stop change from happening, and he can’t.

“Why don’t you want to move here?” You ask bluntly before he has a chance to reply to what you’ve already said. It’s part of why he doesn’t like you, but oh well. He pulls a fairly nasty face at you, but you don’t really care.

“Are you kidding? This is like ground zero. Monsters are changing too much of everything. I don’t trust the secrets, and I don’t trust their intentions. Sure, they’re cleaning up messes or whatever, but what’s all this magic really _doing_ to us? Doing to our _kids_? Look at what’s happened to you since you moved! It’s probably like radiation or something, and we’re all going to grow extra limbs and tails. How much is the world going to change? How much are _we_ going to change?”

He’s still standing here, arguing with you in front of the new place even after Ange and the kids went back to the apartment, ostensibly to grab some more stuff but really so they wouldn’t have to watch this scene. Sans is just chilling over by his bike, facing the other direction and waiting for this to end so he can unload the trunk, which holds considerably more than it should.

“Having an extra limb is the worst thing you can imagine? Looking ‘different’? Was humanity the way it was, the way it’s been for so long, really that great? Why is what you’re talking about automatically a bad thing?”

He looks at you like you’re a monster for even saying that, in the sense that _he_ conceptualizes it.

In the sense of not-a-person.

“Wow. Guess the rest of us can fuck off into mutanthood and you’re fine with it as long as you get to indulge your weird fetishes.”

Ahhh. There it is, then. You turn away.

“Hey!”

Oh, he’s not done. Too bad. He can tell your back his bullshit.

“Bet all that shit in the air’s why Nathaniel’s confused about everything. Hey! Don’t just-it’s bad enough that _you’re_ _giving him ideas_ -”

A hand grabs your arm, wrenching your shoulder as you flinch and gasp, and then just as suddenly it disappears, but only after yanking a little more for good measure. You clutch it; feels like someone jammed an icepick under your shoulderblade. When you turn around, there’s no one there.

Welp.

You sigh tightly and just hold your shoulder a minute, then turn back around _again_ and finish walking back over to Sans. You lean against the tree the Vespa’s next to.

“Where’d you put him?”

He shrugs. “he seemed confused which direction back to his place was, thought i’d help him out.” He glances over at you briefly. “took ‘im bout halfway.”

You glance at the curb where Matt’s car’s sitting, door still open. You notice the keys there in the gutter, too. You pull out your phone, move your shoulder gingerly and scowl as you realize there’s no way you’re going to be able to help unload the trunk after that. Fucker. You send the brief message to the line that takes care of abandoned vehicles, punch in the out-of-state code. Put your phone back, pull out your meds and dry swallow two.

“I’ll help with the next load,” you let Sans know with a slight nod. Then you frown, eyeballing his overly amiable expression. “You left him _above_ ground, right?”

He shrugs, opens the little pod trunk and pulls out two barstools, one after another with a grunt of effort for each one.

“like i said,” he answers mildly. “‘bout halfway.”

***

You sink lower into the tub until your shoulder submerges, appreciating how collapsible Sans’s body is when he tries to make room.

“he was outta line, but not totally off base,” he sighs, scrubbing his hands and fingers meticulously with a nail brush. Even when he lets the rest go, he’s pretty fastidious about keeping his hands clean. It might have to do with funking up the slightly-permeable magic in the spaces, keeping their movement reliable. He’s been staring at them a lot lately, often with an unreadable expression on his face. You wish you didn’t have such a good idea of why, and what he might be thinking. Actually, you wish you could _help_. Who knows...maybe just being here can help, just soaking out the soreness and exhaustion and pain together, talking and giving a shit about each other.

Sans shakes his head at his fingers, brushes something out of his carpals with a huff. “thing we don’t really say is that a lot of what we’re doing… it’s turning stuff into magic. that’s...” He gives you a measuring glance, then looks down into the clouding water. “s’what we do with the trash.”

Oh.

The trash monsters have been cleaning up out of the world. Out of the ocean and the ground, even out of the air. No one actually asked them to; they just started doing it, and no one can really do much about it. Partly because why would they try to stop them? Nothing humans had done had worked, despite the scramble and the incentives and the too-late push to try and do something about nearly every natural system collapsing. The barrier’d fallen in the nick of time, honestly.

“So it’s not just disappearing, then.”

He shakes his head. “nope. we take it underground, it turns into magic. doesn’t even take that long, maybe six months? well, that long til most monsters can eat it. me n paps gotta wait til it’s turned all the way; year or more, depending.”

You slide back up, swish around a second. Think about that.

“But the barrier’s gone, so…” Oh. Maybe they won’t _need_ to take it underground for much longer. Interesting. You also wonder if maybe the underground is bigger than it used to be, too.

“you eat trash?” you say after a minute instead of finishing that sentence.

“you too good to kiss somebody eats trash all of a sudden?” he retorts, raising the tops of his sockets in mock offense. You snort, enjoying the way the steam’s helping clear out some of your residual cold congestion, then lean forward to prove him wrong with a quick press of lips and grab a bottle of soap. Sans actually makes a noise when he sees how swollen your shoulder is, then reaches outside to a shelved fixture by the tub that still contains most of your unpacked toiletries and retrieves a bottle of bath oil.

“lemme get at it,” he requests, brandishing the bottle at you.

“Didn’t you just finish cleaning your hands?” you protest wryly. He just shrugs, plants one on the side of the tub and hauls himself up, clacks his bone ass right on there and squirts some oil on his hand. Some of it drips out, but hey. Not everyone’s hands can be watertight. Or… oiltight? Whatever.

“oil doesn’t count. ashy bones ain’t cute, right?” You snort again as he puts his phalanges to your shoulder, feeling around until he finds a good spot to start rubbing. He does, and you sigh tightly. Never _at_ the inflammation, always around and underneath, where the strain of muscles favoring the injury lurks, waiting to cause additional pain and even potentially more injuries. Most people you wouldn’t let get anywhere near it, but Handsy Sansy always lives up to his name, coaxing out tension radiating outward from the sore joint, making sure to release each point of tension as he goes along.

It helps more than you were expecting.

 

*6 left

 

Your dining room table looks good in an actual dining room, too. You and Ange sit there feeling very in-between-everything and moderately out-of-sorts, finding a little spot of autumn sun to rest in before the chaos starts up again. The kids are playing in the fenced-in backyard, enjoying the sunny day before the cold sets in that might keep them indoors more than they’d like.

You’re not even half moved yet, and she’s had to extend her rental of the truck twice now. It’s not a big deal since you can afford it, but it’s making her sort of uncomfortable not to be able to contribute yet, and she’s already asking about the potential for her to earn an income. You resent that fact that she feels that kind of pressure, but it’s not like you resent _her_ for it. But on the plus side, getting a job in a monster establishment is more likely to be a good way to help people and spend her time, with relatively little inconvenience or attached expenses.

“Toriel says she needs reliable people for evenings at the school,” you offer hesitantly. “And you wouldn’t need to find someone for the kids, because most monster jobs like that, you just bring them. It’s not a big deal. I know I keep saying that, and you keep not believing me. But you really can just bring them. Almost every place has someone there to watch children for whoever needs it. That’s what _you’d_ be doing, okay? Is that something you’d be interested in?”

Ange looks down, then back up at you.

“I know this is hard to get used to,” you assure her gently. “But...you’ll see. Just give it time, and it’ll get easier to just take it and say thank you, okay? Do it for Nattie and Shonda if you can’t do it for yourself yet.”

“That’s fighting dirty, Goob.” Good. You exhale in relief. She’s going to check it out, and knowing her (and that kind of work) she’s probably going to take it. It’ll give her a lot of free time to let her figure out what she wants to do with herself, and it pays much higher than what she’s used to elsewhere.

“I know,” you agree reasonably, “but since it’s also true, I can live with myself.”

***

“I didn’t say anything before because I like it, but I noticed you haven’t spent a night at your place for...a while. Since The Thing.”

He looks at the floor, shrugs and nods.

“Helping people move doesn’t really seem like your scene, either. It’s a lot of effort, and not a lot of reward… and even with my shoulder, we could be managing on our own. Are you okay?”

He sighs heavily.

“nope.”

Your heart crumples like a piece of tinfoil. “Is there anything I can do?”

He just shrugs, shakes his head. Takes your hand and holds it. “you’re not okay either. anything i can do?”

“You’re already doing it,” you answer honestly. “Which is also part of why I didn’t say anything. I’m just...don’t you and Papyrus need each other yet?” Sans gets weird if they spend too long apart, you’ve seen it. Especially if he hasn’t been sleeping. Papyrus has said he does too, but you don’t think you’ve ever seen it happen. Well. It’s hard to imagine what “weird” for Papyrus would be considering how he is normally, but...

Sans has a tense look on his face.

“Are you...avoiding your brother?”

A barely visible nod.

“Can I...ask why?”

He squeezes your fingers, but lets them go so he can pull his legs up onto the bed as well, then he wraps his arms around them, sets his forehead against his knees and just stays like that for minute. You’ve got a pretty good suspicion why he doesn’t want to see him, though. Papyrus always seems to know when Sans is seriously avoiding him, and vice versa. They always respect it, up to a point. As much as they can. That’s a reason you haven’t asked him to come help, too, and you’ve seen him deadlift Frisk. Papyrus could probably have you moved in about ten minutes.

“Is it because you feel like it’s a… sex thing?” you say quietly. He doesn’t say anything for a while, so you just wait.

“me n paps _don’t talk_ bout stuff like that. _ever_.” You can barely hear him, but you understand anyways. “tellin’ jokes is one thing. this ain’t that.” He hunches up further; you hear a faint subvocal whine as he exhales.

“but… i gotta _tell him_.” It’s a low, miserable whisper. “try to find out...gotta ask him about it.” If he knows what that stuff is, if that’s something that he remembers that Sans doesn’t, if there’s any insight he might have about it, or him, or maybe even...what happened. How it happened. Maybe even other stuff too. “don’t know how to even start with something like that, and i don’t...want to.”

“Is there a reason?” A reason they don’t talk about it, a reason it bothers him so much, a reason he’s so afraid.

“i don’t think about it,” he whispers. Gets still. “don’t think bout a lotta stuff, specially from a long time ago. cause how i feel sometimes, how i get when i don’t...feel right. that’s...” he shudders, gets still again. “that’s _always been there_. something’s _wrong_ with me, and i don’t…” he trails off, but you think you know what he’s getting at. He doesn’t want Papyrus to know that about him, or even take the chance that he might find out.

“Hey,” you try. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you.”

“what if i did something bad that made me like this, n jus’ forgot?”

“You don’t have any way to know that,” you point out reasonably. “You kind of default to thinking that way, and you know it.”

“doesn’t mean i can stop,” he whispers miserably.

You exhale. He’s got a point.

“Can I hold you?” you ask instead. “It’s okay if you don’t-”

“yeah,” he croaks, then lets go of his knees and just falls back with a huff. “i feel like shit.”

You get into the bed properly, then beckon insistently. Your shoulder still hurts and so does the rest of you after all the crap you’ve been doing. You both sigh as your bodies find ways to hold each other comfortably, then get even closer. You stroke his skull and press the way he likes, but he doesn’t really relax much.

“Can I touch you?”

“dunno if ‘m up to-”

“Like I did that one time,” you clarify before he convinces himself he’s terrible for not being up to whatever he thought you meant. “When you didn’t feel right. I really want to, if you’d be okay with it.”

He finally looks into your eyes, and just stays that way for a long minute.

“you really do, huh? ...yeah.” His face softens. “yeah, okay.”

You don’t lean up since it’s too much strain right now, but you slide your hand inside his shirt and touch his xiphoid process lightly. He’s so caring, so loving. He always helps you so much, and you’re glad to have him any way that works for him, for both of you. He shivers a little and you hold him closer, trace a little circle on the underside of a rib.

“What does it feel like when I do this?” you ask softly as you continue, thinking about how he’d rubbed your shoulder in the tub the other day. It had really helped a lot.

“little like when you look at my soul,” he whispers after a while, face tucked into your neck and voice barely audible. “little bit like when...you look at me like you love me. like you’re countin’ it all up, seeing what’s real. seeing what’s good and bad. deciding there’s more good than bad… like you wanna hang on to me a little longer, maybe.”

He shivers again, relaxes more. His hand comes up to rub a little circle between your shoulderblades.

“That’s how it feels for me, too,” you say softly.

You do your best, but he still wakes you up with dissonant whimpers, crackles and tones you can’t understand. Fists shoved up into his mandible like he’s trying to choke whatever words he’s saying back inside, balled up and shaking like he’s trying to get rid of his own bones.

It’s time to call Papyrus.

 

* 5 left

 

“I’m so glad we asked you and Frisk to help,” you groan, wanting your bottle of water that’s just out of reach. “I feel guilty, but I just can’t do it anymore.”

“YOU’RE WELCOME,” Papyrus intones smugly as he cradles his snoring brother on your sister’s couch in your half-set-up new living room. Your feelings are rattling around inside you like pennies in a can, making you flinch and start every time it seems like something else is going to happen. But the steady, bright presence of the world’s tallest living skeleton is already doing you a world of good, and you’re certain it’s giving Sans some serious benefit as well.

Papyrus had managed to stay awake this time when Sans fell asleep, but just barely. He’d given a mild start when you’d asked if you could join in to try and catch a few healing vibes, and has seemed alert enough since then. Frisk’s back at their place whipping up Papyrus’s oatmeal, which they apparently know the recipe for.

Three days of constant stress, trouble sleeping, physical exertion, and being too freaked out by your last experience to even touch your own souls has really just wrecked you and Sans. You need a break, so you’re taking one. You pointed out to Sans that he doesn’t actually have to have the talk he’s dreading with his brother the very next time he sees him, and he actually looked slightly embarrassed that something that obvious hadn’t occurred to him.

You and he glance at each other from time to time. He knows something’s going on, but not what. He’s still respecting his brother’s wish to avoid him as much as he can, and you can tell he doesn’t take it personally. Might even suspect what it has to do with, and probably isn’t in a hurry to rock that particular boat.

“I CAN MOVE YOUR BED INTO YOUR NEW HOUSE IN A FEW HOURS IF YOU LIKE,” he offers kindly.

“That would be awesome,” you grunt as you lean over to grab the water bottle finally, guzzle about half, then lean back against his shoulder with a sigh. You’re already starting to feel better. “Seriously...I really appreciate it.”

“GUILT IS AN OVERRATED EMOTION,” Papyrus comments after a minute. “EVERYONE NEEDS HELP WITH DIFFERENT THINGS, BECAUSE WE’RE ALL DIFFERENT FROM EACH OTHER.”

He frowns.

“EXCEPT IDENTICAL TWINS, I SUPPOSE. I DON’T KNOW WHO DECIDED _THAT_ WAS A GOOD IDEA.” He seems very disgruntled about it, then glances at you suspiciously. “ _YOU_ DON’T HAVE A TWIN, DO YOU?”

“No,” you reply, trying not to laugh while imagining what kind of experience could possibly be prompting this type of response. “You’ve met all my siblings. I promise.”

He narrows his sockets, then nods, tentatively satisfied. Then something else occurs to him.

“YOU DON’T HAVE A SECRET TWIN YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT WHO MIGHT SHOW UP IF YOU GO INTO A COMA?”

“I… If I do… obviously, I don’t know. So I can’t really, um...” You trail off, and decide not to tell him about triplets.

Papyrus gives you a hard look, then lets his face soften. Nods in ostentatious acceptance.

“NOBODY’S PERFECT.”

***

Rather than breaking in your new bed (and new house), you and Sans decide to spend the night together in his bedroom instead. Everything’s in flux, and it feels good for both of you to be somewhere familiar, especially since he’s been over at your place for so many nights in a row.

It also feels good to _do_ something familiar, you consider as your arms tighten around his bones. His hard, flexible palm rubs between your legs just the way you like, and he looks happier than he has in quite a while as he gazes soft and fascinated down at your face.

“glad you let me do this,” he whispers as you moan softly. “you’re so good to me. love you so much, you know that? makes me wanna take care a you, make you feel good.” You can feel the slow oscillation in his permeable magic, even through both of your clothes. Your eyes slip shut to feel it even more; it’s really doing it for you.

“love that you can feel that,” he continues, his quiet narration reminding you of other things you both like, but are having a hard time with at the moment. He’s talking because he wants to let you know, he wants to stay connected when he touches you like this, makes you feel this way. Talking makes him feel comfortable, feel safe. It makes you feel that way, too. “love that it feels good to you.” He moves even closer, leans out over you until he can press his ribcage to your chest with a tiny noise of yearning. You know you both feel the gentle surge as his head bows and touches yours, and his warm breath shakes out over your lips. “feels good to me, too,” he adds plaintively, and you can feel the hard bone of his brow crease.

“I’m gonna come,” you moan. He curses tightly as you climax against his hand, your breath exploding out of you quietly as your arms wrap his ribcage, your hips lifting to meet him insistently. It ebbs eventually, but he keeps petting until you jump and squeak, then give a little giggle.

“gets real sensitive for you sometimes, huh?” he asks, skull coming to rest beside your head as he wipes his hand casually on the inside of his shirt. “when you don’t wanna go again.” You nod with a little huff of amusement, catching your breath. Once you do, you use the arm still underneath him to pull him closer for a long, slow nuzzle, then press your lips to his teeth.

Sans pulls away slightly to look at you. “so, uh. jus’ wondering. that offer from the other day still stand?”

You don’t wonder what he’s talking since the heat between his legs is pressed to your thigh, and you smile, nod eagerly. His sockets get flat on the bottom and he lies back before pulling you close again, cups your face to encourage you to kiss him. One of his hands leaves you, and you see it dip into the waistband of his shorts for a minute. He makes an odd expression for a brief moment, but it softens out immediately and he almost looks...fond? He usually seems more conflicted when this happens to his body, and although you wonder what’s prompting its lack, you don’t press and let him go at his own pace. You put your hand in his when it reappears and let him guide you to find out what he’s got going on. You roll onto your side, bunch up the blanket to pad his bony shoulder a bit, then lay your head on it so you can see his face while you touch him. He still doesn’t look at it, doesn’t take his clothes off. In fact, he pulls the covers up a little more over both of you, turns his face down to look at yours. You take the opportunity to give him a few more little kisses as he guides your hand flat-palmed over his ilium, traces his left superior ramus with the pad of your thumb as he exhales soft and deep. He bows his head down toward you, presses his face against yours with another sigh as he guides your fingers over something soft and hot resonating in his pelvic inlet.

“don’t know if humans have this kinda thing?” he whispers against you. “might just be monsters. but, uh. dunno how it… feels, but i got some ideas bout what could work.” He sounds pretty excited by the prospect. “can i show you?”

“I’d love that,” you admit sincerely. “I’m guessing you have some… related experience?”

He shuts his sockets and blushes, but he snorts a little too. “could say that,” he smiles softly, then peeks back at you with the same fond look on his face. It’s true that you don’t recognize what his fingers are guiding yours over, but it feels inviting and responsive. “here,” he whispers, and lifts his hips a little, inhales slow and deep as he slides all four of your fingers gently up under a flap and inside something warm, shallow and...flat? filling most of his pelvic inlet. “s’like a lil pocket,” he murmurs with a smile. “makes ya wanna put something nice inside there, huh?” He holds up his other hand to make a shape, moves it a little in a rocking motion.

“Like...a ‘c’?” you say for clarification.

He huffs in what’s definitely amusement, rubs his face on yours. You shift up onto one elbow to get a better angle, and look down at him. “yup,” he agrees readily, then sighs soft as you make the motion he indicated, taking care to be gentle and watching him carefully. “s’ a good way to put it. maybe we can try some other letters, too.” He feels soft and warm inside, and despite being completely unfamiliar with this kind of genitalia, you can relate to why he finds it appealing. It’s not tight or anything, and neither is his body. You’re just stroking and stimulating the inside with your hand. “feels good,” he encourages you, wiggling in even closer, starts rubbing your back with his hand the way you like.

“try a ‘w’, maybe?” he suggests, and you do. “hmm. say it a few times,” he encourages, pushes up into your hand a bit when you try it.

“I can do words too,” you grin, then press a hot kiss to his face. “Any requests?”

He smiles and sighs, sockets narrowing almost shut. “sorry,” he whispers. You pull your fingers out, circle the outside gently with your knuckles while he shivers with delight. “hmmm,” he exhales happily, then lifts his hips again. “ummm...eat.” His arms tighten around you as you put your hand’s changed shape back inside him, make the short, repetitive motion he’s asked for. It holds the little flap open, too.

He inhales deeply, holds it. Lets it out with a ghost of his voice chasing it and shudders again, holding you more loosely now. “this’s a good one,” he whispers, so you keep at it for a bit as he turns toward you; you lie back onto the pillow as he lifts a femur to put over your hip. His arms slide around you, holding you tight and close for a minute. Then he reaches up, caresses the back of your head over and over while he moves eagerly against your fingers.

It’s noticeable that he’s not nearly as tense as he’s been with other types of genitalia, and you don’t know if it’s the fact that this one seems so familiar to him, or if it’s something inherent to the sensations generated by it. But all you really care about is if he’s having a good time or not, and it sure seems like he is from the blissed out expression on his face when you lean back to look. His breathing deepens, but it’s not especially labored, and something about this makes him seem to really enjoy cuddling and stroking you. It’s nice, and it’s also really satisfying in different way than you’re used to.

“close,” he tries after a few more minutes, and he moans softly at the gentle side-to-side motion. “gotta say that’s one a the best puns i’ve ever made,” he pants after a minute, and you can’t help but snort.

“Best of a bunch of rotten apples,” you murmur against his skull, give it another kiss. He giggles breathlessly, then moans soft. “if...if i ask you to, make a ‘b’ an push it all the way in towards the back, give it a nice lil twirl, okay?” He’s even rubbing you with the leg he’s got thrown over your hip, one hand’s circling between your shoulderblades and the other’s petting your hair again, over and over while he makes soft sounds and nuzzles against you. He whispers encouragement, says how good it feels, tells you you’re good at this, makes a few other requests. At some point you think he’s even petting at your leg with his toes. Before long he tilts his skull back suddenly to look at you, but doesn’t stop moving responsively towards your hand inside.

“i tell you lately how nice you are to cuddle?” His eye lights are massive in his narrowed sockets. “feels _so good_ to hold you,” he sighs lustily, then he sucks in a breath through his nasal cavity, sockets slipping shut. “think it’s gonna happen,” he breathes in surprise, leans his head back even more, revealing his white vertebrae.

“make a ‘b’,” he requests as his arms tighten, and so does his leg over your hip, pulling you a little closer to him. You stiffen your fingers and push in firmly, mostly filling the space this way. When you feel a little resistance, you work your wrist gently in a slight, circular motion.

“y-yeah, do it jus’ like-ohh _hhh_ ,” his voice dissolves away as he exhales slow and tight, and you feel a deep, unfamiliar but very pronounced fluttering pulse happening around your hand as a little of his magic sheds inside, tingling deliciously into your fingers. You’ve never heard him make this sound before, a constant wordless whisper pushed out by his breath, a noise only interrupted by hitching inhales every now and then. Distal phalanges circling your back with their tips make gooseflesh ripple across your body, and you’re kind of glad you already got yours because otherwise you might actually die from how much this is doing it for you. It goes on for quite a while, and he just keeps petting and holding you, whisper-moaning and fluttering and pushing his body at your hand gently and rhythmically.

“oh _hh_...kay,” he sighs plaintively, makes his dry throat-clearing sound. “ok, think ’m good. phew.” He exhales explosively, tilts his head in to rub on you as you take your hand out of his little pocket. “hmm,” he muses as he catches his breath and replaces your hand with his own down inside his shorts. “could get used ta that. s’real mild, and you're good with your hands,” he says a little shakily as his shoulder works. “that’s a whole nother level of sexy talk. _phew_ ,” he repeats lasciviously, squeezes your shoulder with his arm.

“Takes one to know one,” you mock-sass, wiggling against him happily. “Having fun?”

“hmm?” He opens a socket to peek at you for a second, then it slips shut again. “mm. ’m jus’ helping it go back. and yeah,” he grins with a little huff of satisfaction and amusement. “feels nice.”

“Was that like an orgasm?” you ask curiously once he seems satisfied that whatever that had been has gone back to where it came from, and he rolls onto his back. You wad up the blanket again, set your head back on his padded shoulder as his arm tightens around yours.

He looks at the ceiling with narrowed sockets for a minute.

“i’m not sure,” he answers finally. “lasts a lot longer, feels less...” A crease appears between his sockets. “heh. hard to describe. maybe i’ll think soft on it,” he explains amiably, turning towards you with a satisfied smile. “feels real cuddly,” he adds with a tinge of wonder.

“I noticed,” you smile back. “I liked that part a lot.”

“mmm. me too,” he sighs. You both tangle your limbs together eagerly because you’re not sore anymore, and despite the fact that you slept a good portion of the day, you’re both still sleepy.

Time for some soft thinking.

 

* 4 left

 

“How does this place stay open?” Angie asks curiously. “And why are kids allowed in?”

Grillby crackles and pops, and Sans nods once he’s done despite looking more than half asleep still.

“says everyone that’s got human money pools it to pay the licenses, and ‘cause technically s’ a restaurant.” His sockets get long and oval, and he stuffs a fry between his teeth.

Frisk arrives back at the table with an impassive expression and Grillby moves aside a little primly to allow them access. Nattie’s face is imperious as they extend their hand like a tiny monarch to demand it be filled with G. Frisk’s been trundling them amiably on their hip back and forth between the booth that you, Sans, and your sister are eating at, and Lola’s booth where Nattie’s been offering up each single coin Sans parts with per trip. Every other coin is technically for Shonda, who doesn’t actually bother getting up since the current system seems to be working out well for everyone. She’s chattering brightly at Lola, whose heavy lids fail to hide the glint of fascination in her gaze.

Angie says something but you’re not really paying attention, instead you’re watching Sans fish in his pocket, produce another coin without looking, and idly slide it across to the edge of the table with a single fingertip.

“nah,” Sans answers, tilting his skull away as Frisk’s bulk looms down so Nattie’s little brown hand can pinch the coin off the table eagerly. “he owns the lot.” Just watching it, being here, feeling this… it tears at you like a fishhook in your heart, but somehow also in a good way.

It’s been so fucking hard for no reason, and there’s so much good, but so much of not-as-good, too. Nothing’s perfect, but you’re hanging these moments hard as you can every time they decide to show up.

“You okay, Goob?” Angie asks, sounding concerned.

You wipe away a tear surreptitiously.

“I’m just glad you’re here,” you rasp quietly.

***

“thanks for lettin’ me stay over so much lately,” Sans says later, checking out your new digs and the old bed in a new place. “it helps. dunno why.”

“You realize that I’m not doing you a favor, right?” He looks up, and you see that apparently he doesn’t. “I _like_ spending time with you,” you point out reasonably. “That’s why I do it. I’m not tired of you, and you don’t stress me out. You do the opposite of that, and spending a lot of time together’s been helping me, too.”

He gets faintly iridescent, nods slowly.

“’m thinkin we might wanna spend a night apart?” he suggests hesitantly.

Ahh. Good.

“Yeah. We can do that. But if you feel….like you want to?” he nods again. “You can come back, even if I’m asleep, okay?”

His face gets soft, and he gives you a hug.

“okay,” he agrees, and a little bit later he leaves.

It takes you a while to take your soul out, and even longer to touch it. This is a tricky one.

It feels extremely unfair that something you and Sans have been able to rely on to make you both feel better had turned around and hurt both of you so terribly. And you’re not really the type to rail at the unfairness of it all when you have a bad time… too many of your times have been bad to waste your increasingly finite energy that way.

You can’t get stuck between what’s supposed to happen versus what did, because then you’ll live there forever, unable to move past the discrepancy or do much except feel bitter, ranting at your fate. Despite knowing better you feel a pressing need to categorize your experience, even though you know you don’t have one for it; the conflict is making you tired and stressed out. It might even be why you got that head cold; stress makes you very susceptible to random infections.

But how can you deal with something when you don’t know exactly what happened, or why? When you don’t know what the repercussions will be, or if it’s even _over_ yet? So many things like this have happened in your life, and you’re more than tired of it; you’re worn down to the bone.

That’s the shitty thing about trauma. It’s not like in media, where something obvious and violent happens suddenly and someone says ‘Oh! I have become traumatized!’ Everyone else drops everything and puts a blanket over the traumatized person, covering them up and taking them ‘away’; you wonder where people think those traumatized people _go_. You narrow your eyes into yourself wryly, because you know better than anyone they don’t go anywhere. They’re us, they’re you, with as many kinds of wounds as there are people and circumstances. Infinite.

Sometimes trauma is entire relationships, or a certain way people look at you, or even just knowing what someone really thinks of ‘people like you’. Knowing someone has power over you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Knowing that if you don’t eat shit with a smile, you stop being a person to them, and that’s when they make it their mission to prove to you just how much you needed to stay on their good side.

And sometimes it’s something so bad you tell yourself it was _something else_ , that it _wasn’t_ that bad, because if it had been there’s no way you could be okay now. Even if you're _not_ okay now. Even if you’re a fucking mess, you still tell yourself that because it’s easier than the truth. It’s months and years trying to figure out what the hell happened to you, and sometimes you just...never know. Sometimes you forget, or bury it under something else; other times you pack the wound with new trauma because at least you know who put it there and why.

It’s a bitter thought.

All you can do is the best you can for now, and you’re doing it. You wipe a tear and forgive yourself; make a silent promise to keep at it. You know Sans is going to have to talk to Papyrus soon, no matter how much he doesn’t want to, and you’re going to do your best to be there for him, be supportive. For both of them if you can; you can’t imagine that conversation’s going to be any easier on Papyrus than Sans.

You keep looking into yourself, gaze getting fonder. Your lips quirk into a smile; you’re traumatized, haven’t you earned a blanket? You pull yours up over your head with a tiny shiver of anticipation so you can practice some of the touches Sans has showed you, and some of the ones you’ve figured out for yourself. Touching yourself this way isn’t like touching your body; it’s both not sexual and much more sexual at the same time, it’s kind of...everything at once. The actual motions you make with your fingers don’t matter nearly as much as what you mean by them, which is probably a good thing considering how many monsters don’t have hands or anything like them, either. That doesn’t stop them from doing this, you’re certain.

In the same way Sans’s soul remind you of the ocean sometimes, and like textiles at others, your soul’s starting to remind you of things, too. Feelings and images you associate with yourself….like becoming self-aware in a whole new way. You remind yourself of a dark blue cloud, heavy with rain, sometimes snow and thunder, sometimes other things. Full and creative, hovering protectively. Moving slow and expansive, steady and unpredictable… your presence is reliable until it isn’t, your arrival is celebrated or groaned at depending on context.

You know how to change the mood; or maybe just when it _needs_ changing.

You wake up for work halfway underneath a snoring pile of cloth-covered bones, and you feel a lot more okay with things than you have in a while. It’s not perfect, but nothing ever is. You’re not happy, but at some point you think you’ll get there. Everything you need for it is already here, right? You just have to put it together like a self-assembly chair, then break it in stoically with your own ass for a few months.

You can handle this.

 

* 3 left

 

“So, you’re basically a monster now yourself, right?” Diane ribs as you pick at your snips’n’snails. You’ve encouraged her to try it since it really isn’t bad, but telling her the name had probably been a mistake. She’s shoveling a cobb salad into her mouth instead, sans the smelly cheese they come with in actual restaurants that aren’t slightly glorified cafeterias.

“Nope,” you answer honestly, quirking an eyebrow as you shove pressed leaves, mayonnaise, seeds of some kind and something that might in fact be bits of snails this time into your mouth. Swallow, and it disappears. Monster food might actually be improving your table manners. You mom’d be proud, although nothing can stop you from smacking your lips the way that had driven her batshit up the wall. Don’t think about it.

“It doesn’t work that way, and you’d change your tune in a hurry if you knew how much time I spend blinking and asking people for context, and ending up utterly and completely lost. I don’t think i’ve ever heard the phrase ‘but _everyone_ knows’ so many times in my life before I moved to Ebott.”

She just laughs at you, which is the response you expected.

***

“Did he seriously fill ravioli with _money_?” you gasp, mildly horrified.

“mmhmm,” Sans replies easily. “s’tasty. well. little bland, but don’t say anything bout that.”

“But...” you frown, realize that G must be made of magic as well. So it’s edible. Shit, that’s hard to get used to. Maybe almost as hard to get used to as there being things that _aren’t_ edible, you suppose. It’s probably worse the other way around, now that you think on it.

“But...it’s not like that’s a bad thing,” you muse. “It bothers people that someone does that?”

“everyone knows what papyrus does out there,” Sans points out, making you roll your eyes yet again. “not like it’s a mystery.”

“I don’t know...” you gripe.

“yeah you do,” he says patiently. “cause i toldja, remember?”

That’s not what you meant, but whatever.

“But I can’t tell Papyrus I know.”

“nah, s’like...don’t say anything to ‘im. but he knows you know.”

“But...I’ve heard people say stuff to him about it before!”

An irked expression flits across his face. “who said something?”

Oh.

“I don’t know,” you equivocate. “People at Grillby’s. I don’t know their names.”

He narrows his sockets almost imperceptibly, then his face clears. Yeesh. Apparently someone’s getting a talking to at some point. Or maybe not. Sometimes it’s really hard to tell with him. It’s hard to tell with any of this, the layers of context on top of even more layers of what’s considered directness, what’s considered malicious gossip versus what you _have_ to ask other people, since it’s rude to say it to (or...ask?) the person in question. What you’re supposed to say behind someone’s back versus what you can never say to their face...

This shit’s going to give you a tumor.

Dammit.

You wince, make the sign against the evil eye even though you didn’t even say it out loud.

“what was that?” Sans asks curiously.

You grimace.

“Don’t worry about it,” you mumble hypocritically.

“i won’t,” he giggles.

He probably knows. Fucker.

 

* 2 left

 

The possibly prospectively academic tsundereplane is politely ignoring the snoring skeleton on the couch behind it, much more preoccupied with making you think it doesn’t want to be a student. Or maybe it’s not. Kind of hard to tell with tsundereplane, but that’s okay.

You’re glad Lola’d told you about the whole ‘telling them apart’ thing. It’s made dealing with certain kinds of monsters slightly easier, and made a few awkward encounters (ha) embarrassingly explicable. You’ve also started picking up on when not to use the plural to refer to them (even when there are multiple monsters present or being referred to).

It also shed a lot of light on most Temmies’ rather bitchy opinions about Professor Bob, and made you a little more sympathetic towards her. Explains a bit about Chell from the bursar’s too, and why maybe both ended up in a human hybrid college. You suppose being in the amorphous middle of two cultures clashing has its benefits for both humans and monsters sometimes.

It’s interesting. And sometimes confusing and embarrassing, but you wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Because there’s ‘monster culture’; then microcultures like Dogs or Temmies which are noticeably different from monster culture as a whole and each other; then you have people like Chell and Bob who clash with both, finding refuge in individuality and human-shared work and activities.

“W-well, it’s not like I want to go to school to find a boy-friend or anything,” Tsundereplane adds, turning its nose up.

“you don’t even know what a boy _is_ ,” Sans pipes up suddenly, and Tsundereplane bursts into tears and flees, ripping your door off the hinges in the process, smelling like burnt plastic and tarmac.

A slightly exasperated sigh escapes you.

“Sans,” you begin. “I don’t mind hanging out with you at work, but you have to let me do my job sometimes, okay?”

“s’gonna happen like three more times before it fills out the paperwork,” he informs you mildly. You open your mouth to make a biting reply, but he explains before you can, saving you a future apology.

“m’ jus’ speeding up the process.”

You rub your forehead for a few minutes, then stick your hand in the matrix to let maintenance know about the door.

***

Angie: Is...everything okay in there?

You: Yep, Sans is just crying.

Angie: Isn’t that the opposite of okay?

You: Not really. Is it bothering you?

Angie: I guess not. As long as everything’s okay.

You: Are the kids okay? It’s not bothering them, is it?

Angie: No. Nattie actually said they’re glad he’s going to feel better now? I’m starting to think Matt’s right about something in the air here changing people.

You: Well, at least you don’t agree with him that change is always bad.

 

You shake your head, pull up another article on your viewer. You hope Angie’ll take the hint on that one, but it’s up to her, really. This is your place, and there’s room for all of you in it. Room for Sans, too, since he stays over with you sometimes.

After a minute Sans pulls his skull out of your shoulder, leans up to pull another bottle out of his phone. The smell of citrus-pine happens, and when the bottle’s empty he makes that retching noise, and you wince. He shakes it out, puts his head back into you and begins to weep more quietly this time.

You exhale, use your hand to press his skull the way he likes. You’re getting a better idea of what that stuff is, or...well. What it does, at least.

You open a pack of cinnamon bunny, stuff it in your mouth as you squeeze your arm around him, give it a little wiggle. He sighs it out, shakes it out. Leans up and takes out another bottle. You feel slightly conflicted, but it’s not really up to you, and you’re figuring it’s not good to drag this out too much longer in any case.

When the bottle’s contents are gone this time, he makes an odd face, then gets up the rest of the way, walks to the door.

“be back in a lil bit,” he intones strangely, then leaves.

He’s gone for about 45 minutes according to your viewer, and when the door opens again it’s him, looking lost and miserable. You lift your arm again, and he crawls back into bed with you. He’s not crying this time, but he’s still shivering and sighing something out.

After another hour, he sits up and drinks again. He puts the empty back, and turns to look at you sleepily.

You check the time: time for bed.

“gonna talk to ‘im tomorrow,” he whispers flatly. “...will. would you.”

“I’ll come with you,” you encourage gently, dismiss your viewer.

He lies back down and you tangle your limbs together, and when he falls asleep he takes you with him.

You wake up feeling well rested, like it’s going to be a good day.

...Physically, at least.

 

* 1 left

 

When you get to his place, Papyrus is already just sort of sitting loosely at their dining room table, looking not exactly happy to be there.

Neither of you ask why.

“gotta talk to you, bro,” Sans mumbles at the floor, turns and shuffles slowly into the living room. You follow him after giving Papyrus an encouraging smile. You sit next to Sans on the couch; he rummages in his pockets absently, frowning vaguely at nothing even when Papyrus comes around the corner and has a seat perpendicular to you.

Neither brother actually says anything for a long time; you suppose there’s no reason to rush now that they’re done avoiding each other.

It still surprises you when Sans just pulls the canister with The Stuff in it out of his pocket and plonks it down on the coffee table, though.

 

 


	41. NICE KNOWING YOU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I might not be sorry but I also don't expect forgiveness
> 
> [Radical Face- The Crooked Kind](https://youtu.be/QVGkonT-5sA)

Papyrus’s face goes utterly and completely blank as he stares at the silver stuff floating in the container on the table.

“don’t know who else ta ask, paps,” Sans whispers, sounding chagrined. “you got _any_ idea what this is?”

Papyrus stays absolutely motionless, like something dead. Sans’s face crumples as much as it’s able. He rasps his fingers over his fixed grin repeatedly, then snatches the canister back off the table.

“NO,” Papyrus manages flatly as Sans wrestles it back into his pocket, shamefaced and regretful. “I DON’T WANT TO KNOW.”

“sorry bro,” Sans whispers faintly. “m’sorry.”

“I...” Papyrus makes a dry, clicking sound. “IT’S _NOT_ YOUR FAULT.”

“maybe i can remember if i just try hard enough,” Sans mumbles, and his distal phalanges skirt the edges of his sockets in a way you don’t like very much.

“gotta _try_ , right? gotta...” he huffs softly.

His fingertips click rapidly over the texture of his fixed grin, then again.

Papyrus stands abruptly, then just walks through the coffee table. It mostly disintegrates as he steps forward absently; his hesitant half-turn back then forward again crushes it the rest of the way.

“YOU’RE PROBABLY JUST HUNGRY.”

Hes not looking at either of you as he strides around the corner and through the dining room. He ends up in the kitchen, which you know since you immediately hear glass shatter on the floor.

“but… i shouldn’t _have_ to try, cause i remember everything,” Sans whispers absently, voice flat and face twisting and untwisting as much as it can. “i _know_ i do, cause i wish i didn’t half the time,” he rambles.

You hear a shocking amount of clatter from the kitchen, and you watch Sans carefully for some kind of cue as to how to respond. He just looks at the floor pensively, neither responding nor flinching as the noises get louder, even more chaotic. You’re pretty sure that sound’s a cupboard door being ripped off the hinges, and...oh, geez. How do you _crush_ a pot?

There’s a beat of silence, and you can hear Papyrus panting shallowly for a moment right before something goes through the kitchen window the hard way.

Sans stares through the wreckage of the table on the floor, frowning more thoughtfully now. “it jus’ keeps on going and going til...it doesn’t anymore,” he muses, seeming less panicked and more pensive.

It continues.

“Where does it stop?” He’s not speaking aloud, but you understand him anyway. His hands are out.

“No, that’s not it. I should be asking, where does it start?” he mutters silently, shaking his head as the smell of smoke hits the living room like a wall. “There has to be a beginning; I just have to find it. I’ll keep going, just trace it back, until...” That sounds like the fridge falling over, and...okay. Maybe a fridge being torn apart now?

“Once I get to the beginning, I’ll be able to figure out what’s _behind_ the beginning.” Sans’s phalanges twitch his thoughts out, and he seems inexplicably calmer the worse the noise gets.

“But I can’t even...do I remember my brother? Was he ever smaller than me?”

“don’t think about it,” he whispers absently aloud, points dimming vaguely in their sockets. “’s jus’ babybones. they’ll let you know.”

“Was he...a child? Did I know his name before...before we...”

“don’t think about it,” he whispers again. “jus’ tired. get some rest.” You don’t think he knows he’s doing it.

You and Sans both start and look up suddenly as something slams into a wall downstairs, then Frisk’s heavy steps pound up the staircase. They appear at the landing, eyes wild, and Sans’s eye lights firm and sharpen suddenly. Frisk pants, staring at Sans. Then their eyes dart around the room, terrified. Ahh. They smell the smoke, at least.

“oh, hey. sorry, kiddo,” Sans says, and you see them relax a little at his calm response. The sound of wood bending, then splintering is coming from the kitchen, which apparently they can’t hear at all.

“tell you what. why don’t you go ahead and….take the bike on over to your mom’s for a little bit?” Frisk pants in fear and lifts their hands; Sans rummages in his pocket and tosses a keyring at Frisk before they have a chance to say anything. They startle at the flash but manage to catch them.

“s’okay,” he reassures them, seeming in no hurry to get up. “i got it taken care of. you go on.” You do your best to mimic his demeanor, even though you’re feeling moderate-to-severely freaked out yourself.

Frisk clutches the keys to their chest as they walk forward, eyes widening again as they notice the wreckage of the table. Sans winks at them calmly when they look back up, nods encouragingly. Frisk coughs, then heads out the door. Sans sighs when the door shuts behind them, then leans forward heavily, lurches to his feet.

“Should I leave too?” It’s your own frightened whisper.

“up to you,” he shrugs. “’m jus’ gonna help ‘im clean up. probably gonna end up back in here in a few minutes.”

You can see smoke gathering near the ceiling as he shuffles away around the corner and into the kitchen. The noises stop.

“what’s cooking, bro?”

“I… CAN’T FIND THE EGGS.”

“eh, that’s okay. we might be out. i can go to the store later if you want. that sound good?”

A long silence.

“YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THAT.”

“i don’t mind. s’okay.”

A dry noise that you don’t recognize. It bothers you, though.

“I MADE A BIT OF A MESS.”

“nah. s’fine. gimme a sec, okay?”

Another long silence, then a tiny clatter-clink of shards.

“don’t worry about it, bro. jus’ gimme a sec.”

The smell of smoke disappears completely and abruptly.

You hear Papyrus’s panting breath, then another dry noise. Is he crying? You’ve never seen (or heard) Papyrus cry. Not for real. Not like... _that_. Your face gets hot, and you feel bad for being here for this. Just when you think to stand up and take off, let the brothers sort out their...whatever this is, Papyrus walks around the corner, holding his brother over his face like a life-size doll. Once he turns the corner (walking once again through the remains of the table), he turns around so he’s no longer facing you, and you can see that Sans’s expression is pensive, even though his feet are dangling. Sans’s mittened hands pet his brother’s skull soothingly as Papyrus sets him down in the couch in a sitting position, and continues to leave his face buried in the front of his sweater as he hunkers down on the floor in front of him. Sans just continues to frown and pet, until you raise your hands to gesture at him.

“Is he...okay?”

Sans sees what you say, his eye lights glancing over. He looks back at the wall, then frowns and shakes his head.

After a little while, he finally asks a question.

“what’s buggin you, paps?”

He stays quiet except for the occasional dry, huffing noise, which is apparently what he does instead of sobbing. It doesn’t even sound like _him_. At all. Sans just looks sad and waits.

“IT’S MY FAULT,” comes Papyrus’s loud but muffled voice a little while later. “I MAY HAVE MADE...A MISTAKE.” It sounds harsher than usual.

“i dunno about that, bro. what do you think’s your fault?”

Papyrus huffs quietly for a long, long time. Long enough for you to have to go to the bathroom and come back. You jump when he finally answers; Sans doesn’t. His face has stayed the same this whole time, but it changes when he hears this.

“I MADE YOU FORGET,” he admits shakily, and it’s as quiet as anything you’ve ever heard from him.

Sans stops breathing for a few seconds, then resumes both that and his tiny, soothing gestures over his brother’s skull.

“gotcha,” he says in the same soothing tone of voice as before. “why’s that?”

“BECAUSE YOU ASKED ME TO.”

Sans’s eye lights dim and shrink, then return to normal as he exhales very slowly.

“i can think of one or two reasons i might do that,” he says very, very quietly. “something real bad happened, didn’t it?”

“I FORGOT TOO,” Papyrus almost manages to whisper.

Sans’s face sags, and he looks exhausted. “sorry i asked you to do that, papy.”

“I DIDN’T...I DON’T WANT TO KNOW! IT’S _NOT_ YOUR FAULT!” Papyrus cries into his brother. Apparently he shakes like Sans too, sometimes. You can hear it, even muffled by his undergarment. “DON’T! YOU….SHOULDN’T...”

“s’okay, paps.”

“I... HAD TO HURRY?” He sobs helplessly, and it’s a terrible sound. You wipe tears away from your own face once you realize they’re there. “I DON’T _WANT TO KNOW!_ ”

“papyrus. you don’t have to know, ok? it’s okay.”

“WHAT IF YOU GET HURT?” It’s a strangled, awful sound. “...SICK? WHAT IF I CAN’T... IF I DON’T _KNOW_...”

“paps, i-”

A high, wordless whine comes from Papyrus, and you feel cold all over. Sans huffs, eye lights pinned as he yanks off a mitten, scrapes his bare phalanges over his brother’s skull.

“paps, i’m not hurt. not sick, k? m’okay. you didn’t make me sick.” The whine stops, but Sans looks shaken and he speaks very carefully. “jus’ gotta take a minute to calm down. i know you’re scared right now, but i’m okay.”

Papyrus resumes weeping quietly, and you realize you’re getting up, coming over to sit closer. You don’t know why, other than you feel desperate to help this somehow. For some reason being with you that way had made Sans ill, or...something. And now everything’s awful. You’ve never seen Papyrus this afraid, and from the look of it you’re not sure his brother has, either.

“Is it...okay if I ask you something, Papyrus?”

Sans nods at you. His bare phalanges are still touching his brother.

“Do you know where what Sans showed you came from?”

Papyrus makes the same dry retching sound Sans had when he first saw what his body had made, and suddenly Sans is against the far wall near the door to your room, hunched over and wiping his hands on his shirt, sockets wide and blank.

Oh.

He does know.

Or maybe… he doesn’t _know_ , but something in him _remembers_ … without him knowing.

But he doesn’t _want_ to know, so he doesn’t know.

_Oh._

The way he hunches over, directly into the couch now since he’s by himself… reminds you of his brother. Neither one is okay; they’re by themselves even though they’re together.

You exhale tightly as he looks up at you. His face is still blank despite the tears on it, despite the fact that you know he’s more upset than you’ve certainly ever seen before. You’re pretty upset yourself, and you can relate to what they’re going through. He slips back a little, sitting on the floor now instead of kneeling as you stare at each other, thinking.

You’re both painfully aware of Sans hunched up against the wall, still and silent.

He can’t remember, but he needs to know.

After a while, Papyrus pulls off his gloves.

“I cannot bear it,” he admits finally, face still wet with iridescent tears. “I would lie down and not rise again.”

You know what that means, and you know what he’s talking about. You nod slowly.

“This is a conflict,” he adds. “I am trying to find a way to resolve it, but I am afraid.”

You nod again, bring up your own hands to sign back.

“You’re very brave, too,” you point out. “This isn’t easy, and I’m proud of you.”

His blank expression shifts slightly, and he replaces his face in the couch cushions for a few minutes. When he lifts it again, he looks a little different. A little firmer around the sockets and jaw, like he’s braced for something.

Sans still hasn’t moved.

“Sometimes the bravest thing to do is ask for help,” he signs slowly, then meets your gaze. “Can _you_ bear it?”

Your eyes widen.

“I don’t know,” you answer honestly. “But...” you think about it. “I’m willing to try. And… I can ask for help if I can’t, too.”

You feel determined.

“I believe there is a way for you to find out what needs to be known,” he gestures with extreme reluctance. “I do not like it, but I also believe it is the best of many bad choices.”

“We should take care of Sans first,” you sign quickly as he pauses, “and discuss this in another room.”

He inclines his skull slowly, replaces his gloves. You both stand, and make your way over to Sans. He’s sitting cross legged facing the wall with his skull pressed against it. You each sit on either side, and you can see when you lean in that his eye lights are back, even if they’re dim and small. He’s not looking at anything in particular, and his hands are in his pockets.

“Hey,” you try. Eventually he rolls his skull and the pips in his sockets turn toward you, even if they don’t meet your eyes. “Me and Papyrus might be able to figure something out,” you explain as delicately as possible. “You need to know what’s going on with you, right? If you have a medical condition, if you’re...if you’re going to be okay. You need to know what you are, and why this happened to you.”

He nods.

“There might be a way that I could know what… what you and he forgot. What he made you forget. And I could tell you what you need to know, if there’s...anything like that. But... _he_ wouldn’t have to know.”

“how’s that possible,” he whispers flatly.

“Integrity,” you reply succinctly.

“huh,” he whispers in the same tone. “what if it’s...”

He trails off instead of listing the horrible possibilities.

“I’ll still love you,” you reassure him gently.

“don’t make promises ya can’t keep,” he whispers hollowly. “i dunno. might be… i wanted to forget for a reason. might be better to just leave it alone. i don’t think i wanna remember.”

“YOU WON’T REMEMBER,” Papyrus interjects. “AND I WON’T EITHER. ONLY THEY WILL REMEMBER, AND… THEY WILL HOPEFULLY BE ABLE TO TELL YOU WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW.”

Sans’s face sags as much as hard bone is capable of, flattened grin a rictus.

“what if it’s real bad?” he whispers.

“THAT’S… NOT REALLY IN QUESTION,” Papyrus points out reasonably enough, angling his sockets away, then back. Considering the current situation, whatever they’d forced themselves to forget is probably about as bad as it gets. “DEGREE OF BADNESS MAY NOT BE A FACTOR, BUT RATHER...TYPE. OF BADNESS.”

Sans turns his skull the other way; you hear the dissonant tones and impenetrable hiss-crackle of the language they speak. Maybe you’ll find out what it is. You’re not really looking forward to it, and if your suspicions are correct, you’re sure Papyrus isn’t either.

You hear Sans’s dry sob, and you look down as the brothers embrace. This time it’s Papyrus who clicks his chin against Sans’s bare skull; his tears slow and stop after a minute. Papyrus sighs heavily, then picks his brother up and carries him over to the couch while you lean against the wall to stagger heavily to your feet.

“THIS MAY TAKE SOME TIME,” he intones. “IF YOU… NEED A NAP, I UNDERSTAND.”

Sans just shrugs, lies down and stares at the far wall. You come over and he looks up at you, reaches his hand out. You give it a squeeze while Papyrus makes a detour into the garage, returning with a folding table under his arm. He meets your eyes briefly, then inclines his head towards the door to your room. You exhale, stand up and open the door for him, follow him inside. He sets the table up next to the wall that has space for it, then arranges two of the chairs so you’ll both be just sitting at a table facing a wall. Then you just stand there together.

Eventually he turns to you, pulls his gloves off yet again, sets them on the edge of the table. Poor guy.

“My brother will be asleep in just a moment.”

“Does he know what we have to do to make this work?”

Papyrus's face is blank.

“He does not want to know, and I do not want to know whether he does or not,” he answers. Fair enough; you nod. Pull out a bottle of water, take two sips. Nothing crazy; you don’t want to piss yourself, and you’re not sure how long it’ll take, either.

As long as it takes, you suppose.

You and Papyrus look at each other. Apparently there’s actually not much left to discuss. You’ve both made up your minds.

“Sans has put himself to sleep,” he says finally. “He offers us privacy.”

“Do you need to show me what to do?” You gesture silently.

He exhales, glances to the side and back.

“I will do it for you,” he decides. “I will show you when. But I cannot go with you. Not without...remembering. I...” He looks so afraid. “I would prefer it if you look only at the wall, and do not hear.”

“I can do that,” you agree easily.

“Now that I am here, I realize how much I had hoped this would not be necessary. _I do not want to be known_.”

That doesn’t really require a reply, so you just wipe your tears off brusquely with both hands, scrub them on your hips. His sockets close, and you feel a chilling wave of unfamiliar not-okay drift through you.

When they open again, you lift your hands to gesture.

“It’s whatever _we_ decide it is,” you say adamantly. “We’ve decided it’s the right thing to do, no more and no less. And it’s...” You blink, realizing.

“This is _nobody’s_ _business_ ,” you find yourself signing.

“You are right,” Papyrus gestures back, seeming reassured and heartened by whatever association that makes for him. “That makes it easier; I am glad you said that. And I am certain you will not know any more than is absolutely necessary, because...”

His face does something you’ve never seen before, and you have no idea what it could mean. It seems awfully complicated.

“Because I know you,” his fingers twitch out, and he wipes his phalanges on his chest surreptitiously. Papyrus yanks out a chair and sits down abruptly, facing the wall. You join him a little more gingerly, scoot your chair in. Then you just wait for him to be ready, set your hand lightly on your thigh underneath the table.

He leans over until his frontal bone clonks onto the tabletop, which you see in your peripheral vision since you’re not looking at anything but the wall. You don’t hear bones clacking together inside a muffling undergarment, and you don’t see a pale iridescent glow coming from underneath the table, either. You go ahead and set your face down on the tabletop too, making it a little easier to ignore it. The table was a stroke of genius.

The first thing you do when he takes your fingers in his is concentrate on an offer to forget whatever you feel right now, and a rush of relief adds itself to the flood of trust and something else, the latter of which has a lot of other murky, scary things attached to it that no one’s very happy about. Another feeling that you won’t remember happens as you make contact, increases exponentially when he realizes he doesn’t even need to _ask_ you to forget. You already know how; you will do so willingly and completely because you respect him so much, and you care for him deeply. Soft sounds that you don’t hear happen when he can’t help but feel it, and his breathing gets funny in a way you promise to forget as well. It increases as his fingers tighten on yours, and you try to stop gritting your teeth.

It doesn’t really work though, because you have just enough room to know something else besides Papyrus.

You know this is gonna _hurt_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a few months of soul searching I've decided the next chapter's going to be optional, so the subsequent chapter will also be posted at the same time. Both will have detailed additional warnings at the top, so please heed them. I'm not messing around.


	42. Osteomyelitis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **MASSIVE WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER.  
> **  
>  This chapter should be skipped by almost everyone. It contains child abuse, childhood sexual abuse, incest, and rape. It is realistic, and also contains things that abusers of this sort will do and say to their victims and other people. Only adults should be reading this at all; if you’re young and decided to break the rules, don’t.  
> These events will be discussed in the next chapter, and their relevance to the rest of the story explained and explored. This conveys the experience of the events from the perspective of a small child, and it is more upsetting than I can really effectively warn you. I kept it in a separate doc so I wouldn’t see it by accident, and I wrote it. You can always skip now and change your mind later. That doesn’t work the other way.  
> You should also know that reading this chapter will make you painfully aware of how traumas can shape people’s behaviors (even and especially if they don’t remember them). Some are very obvious, and some are not, but knowing will affect your perspective on things that happened before and after this. Once you know, you can’t not know.  
> Tori Amos- Smokey Joe  
> https://youtu.be/9lpfc7AQnNE

**MASSIVE WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER: Child abuse, childhood sexual abuse, incest, and rape.**

 

 

The first thing Papyrus remembers is how incredibly strange and startling it is to suddenly exist.

The first thing he _feels_ is of course the fear; the second is the certainty that it will never leave him.

The third is his brother.

 

 

“heya, babybones.” It’s his brother’s high, distinctively shaped lowercase voice, pitched to soothe. “c’mere.” Papyrus feels himself being picked up, balanced on a familiar broad ilium, an arm coming around to hold him there securely.

“The anomaly isn’t even active yet,” his brother comments evenly. “And there is no way to tell how long it will be before it shows up from in here. This is an absolute disaster.”

“looks like we had ta take a lil detour, but….we’ll be home soon, k?” his brother reassures softly.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” comes his brother’s cased reply. “Wouldn’t you agree it’s strange none of them have managed to keep track of how long it’s been since the barrier was put in place? I’d suspect duplicity, but it’s obvious that most of them would benefit much more from telling us the truth.”

“but... you said we’re in _all_ of em now, right? least one of us’s gotta stop it from happening. that’s just the most likely outcome.”

“Just because it’s the most likely doesn’t mean it will happen. I’m not about to give up and let some other me figure this out. No, the best plan is to try and refuel and repair, and see if we can make it back to try again.”

 

 

“...until suddenly, it all ends,” his brother intones with grim finality. “This must be prevented at all costs. Otherwise, how can the future come to pass? If the past is erased...”

“i know, i know,” his brother says by rote, but he can hear the grin. “gotta carpe that diem, right g?”

“Yes, Comic Sans,” his brother laughs gently. “We must carpe as many diems as possible, to maximize our chances of success. This process will be much easier if we manage to breach the barrier in time. Check the readings carefully, and write them into the reports as often as is practical. They can only be transcribed accurately in this room, so make sure and keep it closed.” His brother’s bone palm caresses his skull soothingly.

“heh. i can read your writing fine, though.” Sans is pleased despite the protest; he made him laugh, he trusts him to do the work just like a partner, like he’s grown. He feels important, wants his approval and attention.

“That is because we are brothers,” his brother explains. “The work you have put towards legibility due to the impediment is not in vain; others will be able to read it clearly. Even those with weaker vision and understanding, like the child will become.” The child must be Papyrus, since he’s the only other person here. He’s a person, right? He must be; the others don’t know his name or that he is also a brother, because he can’t express himself yet. If he could, he’d tell them he’s not weak, he’s strong and good and very, very brave. But he will be able to...at some point. It’s just a matter of _time_ , isn’t it?

That’s the problem.

 

 

Papyrus stares at his brother’s fused mandible. It’s directly in his line of vision since he’s being carried, propped up on his hip as they stand in front of the massive white and purple shape that they address as “your majesty.” It’s a little hard for Papyrus to make him out, although he gets a feeling that will improve as time goes on. However, there is no guarantee that time _will_ go on at any point, and that makes him afraid. It’s okay, though. Everything makes him afraid. He still struggles against it, and his brother’s hard fingers soothe his back carefully.

“Your tolerance is appreciated, your majesty.” His brother’s long, thin phalanges express his font perfectly; not only can he be understood, he can make sure no misunderstandings are possible. He’s understood exactly how he wants to be understood; Papyrus can feel it without even touching.

“Asgore,” his majesty says yet again.

“As you say, your majesty. Please know that we’re working on a solution as we speak, there’s just the matter of finding adequate fuel. Then there can be light, heat, and other creature comforts that can greatly benefit the population. More _space_ might even be possible, although less _time_ might not be. You understand.”

“Of course,” his majesty sighs.

“Let me know if anything changes, as I will in turn notify you. Now I must get my brothers back to their room. They are very young, and still quite fragile.”

“Are you sure they do not require anything more? If they are as fragile as you-”

“My brothers require special care, and must be kept safe from extreme temperatures as well as certain chemicals. You understand.” It isn’t a question.

“Of course, Gaster. Inform me of any changes in that situation as well.”

“maybe you shoulda told ‘im it’s all gonna collapse in on itself if this doesn’t work,” Comic Sans mutters softly as they leave the throne room.

“No reason to alarm him needlessly,” his brother replies calmly, if just as quietly. “After all, if it does not work, there’ll be little need for explanations at that point, will there.”

It’s not a question. Papyrus feels Sans’s soft exhale; phalanges soothe his back, then rasp over his bare skull briefly.

Sans feels afraid, too.

 

 

 

“It seems well within the margin to me.”

Papyrus weaves his long phalanges through the matrix again, delighting in the way the colors play off one another. Blue and orange are his favorites; they remind him of himself.

“dunno. might wanna double check that, bro.”

“Very well, but...”

Papyrus’s brother trails off, and his brother speaks into the silence left behind.

“see? not a big problem or anything, s’just smoother this way.”

“I appreciate the correction,” Papyrus’s brother hiss-crackles.

He’s not angry, though. He never gets angry. Not like Papyrus, when the fear gets to be too much and he has to run, has to struggle or throw something. Has to do _something_ to let it know it’s not welcome there, coiling in his ribcage and skull, making itself at home in him. It’s not welcome, and it’s rude to stay somewhere you’re not welcome. Like where they are now. They got here by accident, and everyone’s been so accommodating because of it. But there’s too much of everyone and everything in here; they’ve thrown off the balance by showing up unexpectedly in a completely closed system. There’s not enough food, light, or energy to keep it all going. Not enough for three more, and they’ve got to make up for it somehow.

That’s why they’re trying to help get them out, or... that’s why they’re trying to get home. Maybe both? Papyrus isn’t sure.

“I’ll have to get used to the fact that you’re outpacing me in the mathematical aspects of our work, I suppose. You’re finally growing up, Sans. It’s about time, and I’m proud of you.”

“….nah.” It’s a quiet, pleased sound. He craves recognition, just like Papyrus. And it’s not as if he has anyone else to get it from in here. “i could never even catch up with you, g. i probably don’t even know what i’m talkin bout.”

“You’ve demonstrated your abilities quite ably, there’s no need to be modest.” A long silence; Papyrus feels his shoulders tense.

“But there’s still the matter of fueling it.”

Sans doesn’t say anything.

Papyrus flicks his phalanges, watching the colors play back and forth, cyan and yellow, blue and green, purple and blue again. Light blue; dark blue. Dark; yet darker.

Gaster sighs patiently; Papyrus hears bones clack down gently on the steel table. “This one has the best chance of working of any we’ve made so far.” His tone is conversational and light.

“come on. least take me to the other room.” It’s a tight whisper.

“They’re far too young to be left alone, and too young to remember anyway.”

There’s no answer, since that wasn’t a question. Papyrus hears a rustle, then the soft rasp of bone on bone instead. He hunches in on himself; the fear is always there, but sometimes it has different flavors. This one’s so familiar it’s bitter.

A sharp clack. Papyrus doesn’t flinch. He’s proud of that, but it doesn’t make hearing this any less frightening, or the rest of it easier to bear.

“wouldn’t kill ya to take it easy on me,” his brother says mildly after a particularly sharp rasp.

“It’s not my fault that you can’t perform anymore unless I do this to you first,” his brother replies much the same, maybe a little more emphatic. “Don’t you want to go home?”

It’s a question; Sans does his best not to answer despite this. A series of sounds, and his brother makes a faint, sharp hiss of pain. Papyrus hunches further. It doesn’t go well when Sans allows any noise at all to escape him before it’s time. It’s better when Papyrus is invisible and Sans is silent. When he makes a sound he gets embarrassed, starts to argue. The more he talks, the worse it gets.

“goin’ home, huh? that what it’s for this time?” Sans sounds polite, friendly. Loathing floats like thick, oily sewage just above where it can be detected on the still waters of his voice. “why’d you do it when we were still there, then?”

“You know the answer to that,” Gaster replies patiently, although Papyrus can hear his breathing change.

“i didn’t know any better,” Sans grunts, voice going flat. “’s not true.”

“Yes it is. This wouldn’t be _possible_ if it wasn’t, and you know it.”

Clack, rasp. Other noises now, too. Papyrus doesn’t care for any of them, and he keeps his sockets fixed on the colors.

“s’not true,” he repeats, faint and desperate this time. Papyrus hopes it’s over, but after an extended silence filled with terrible sounds, he keeps talking.

“you made me like this on purpose, didn’tcha?” Sans blurts in a tight, frightening tone. Sharp and cutting. “put somethin in there ta make sure i came out wrong?”

Oh, no. This really isn’t going well at all. This might be even worse than arguing.

“You know I did not.” That endlessly patient voice is starting to gain an unusual edge. “There’s nothing wrong; in fact, if your condition was replicable, I would have replicated it.” Crisp, almost mathematically precise clipping to those crackling tones.

“guess you would.” Sans breathing is tight, his voice is thick, defeated. There’s a metallic clink. To Papyrus’s horror, the next sentence is preceded by a thin sob. “better that it’s jus’ me, then. i deserve it.”

“That’s not why, either. Why don’t you tell me, Comic Sans.”

Papyrus would do anything to stop being able to hear his brother’s quiet, hopeless weeping. That’s never happened before. There’s no answer other than sharpening sobs, the rasp of bones against bones, against steel.

“Tell me. Why do I do this to you?” A curl of heat enters Gaster’s voice, but it’s not anger. Gaster doesn’t _get_ angry. It’s something else, and it makes Papyrus feel strange and bad. Like he shouldn’t be hearing that sound, either.

“cause i want it.” It’s a humiliated, barely-audible hiccup.

“Say it so I can hear you.” Bones on steel, on bone. “I won’t until you do.”

“i want it,” his brother groans, panting desperately. “i _want_ it.”

“Then show me,” his brother insists.

“ _make_ me,” he sobs miserably, clinging to his shattered dignity.

“Fine. I’ll do it myself.” He’d still sound perfectly calm if his breathing wasn’t so heavy.

Papyrus does flinch after all when the faintly iridescent white glow is cast over his shoulder, affecting the way the colors he’s playing with swirl and coagulate in the air in front of him. The glow gets twice as bright almost immediately, and that’s when he hears the sound he hates the most.

He feels guilty about it, too. He should be glad his brother isn’t in pain anymore, shouldn’t he? But for some reason Sans’s mindless, ecstatic moan is the worst part every time. There’s clacking and scuffling; Gaster is silent except for his labored breathing, but something spills off the steel table onto the floor. Sans moans again like all the air’s being shoved out of him; he makes a retching, congested sound as the glow fades, then disappears.

“All right, give it to me,” Gaster says once his breathing’s steady again.

“you jus’ put it in there, n you want it back already?” Sans slurs resentfully, sniffs wet and thick. It’s not a good sound. “pretty fickle. maybe i wanna hang on to it.”

Gaster emits a long-suffering sigh. “You know it’ll just make you sick, especially that much. We’ve been over this before. Eventually you’d get an infection, and-”

“maybe i want to,” he interrupts in a hopeless drone, then coughs weakly. “maybe i don’t _care_ anymore. what’d you do then, huh?”

“Don’t be so dramatic.” Gaster’s voice sounds more compassionate than corrective, which only adds to the sick, twisting unease Papyrus feels. “Although I suppose...well. Your resentment is understandable after such an imposition, and such a great deal of necessary discomfort. It’s never entirely pleasant, and this was worse than usual. But please know, I don’t want you to die. I love you. You know I do. But if that’s not good enough anymore, think of our sibling. Who will care for them if you’re gone?”

“s’like you don’t even remember what you say, sometimes.” Sans grunts painfully, then makes the same wetly congested cough a few times while Papyrus hears him shifting around on the steel table. After a moment a different, silvery glow appears, then disappears just as promptly.

“Thank you, Comic Sans,” Gaster says quietly. “I suppose I’ll see you later tonight, whenever that is.”

He leaves, and Papyrus feels a little of the tension go out of his shoulders once he’s gone. It’s probably visible, and he feels ashamed. At least Sans is preoccupied with wiping off the table and floor, changing his clothes. He didn’t beg him to stay this time; he’s very brave. Papyrus wants his brother to think he’s brave too, and hopes he doesn’t notice when he isn’t. Papyrus wishes he didn’t have to spend so much time not being noticed; people _should_ notice him. He’s pretty great, after all.

“heya, babybones.” Sans shuffles around in front of Papyrus. He’s changed his pants, but missed that a few millimeters of the hem of the shirt under his lab coat is still soaked in his cast off magic. “bet you’re hungry by now, huh? welp, we’re all done for today, so why don’t we-”

“MY NAME ISN’T BABYBONES,” Papyrus informs him. It turns out his voice is uppercase, then. Harsh, but very clear. It’ll do. “IT’S PAPYRUS.”

Sans staggers, falls to his knees in front of him with a hollow, clacking thud. “papyrus?” he whispers hollowly, blank sockets fixed on the floor. “oh. papyrus...”

“WHY DOES HE MAKE YOU SAY THAT? YOU DON’T WANT IT! YOU OBVIOUSLY DON’T CARE FOR IT AT _ALL,_ AND IT MAKES ME FEEL-”

“stop,” his brother croaks, hands coming up to cover his face.

Papyrus tilts his head up at Sans, looking into the place where his mandible is fused to the fossa on the right side. Part of his condition, which apparently isn’t replicable. And neither is whatever it is that Gaster causes his body to make, that stuff he uses to try and get them out of here and on to the surface, or get them home. Papyrus isn’t always sure which. He’s starting to think Gaster isn’t, either.

“s’not that bad, okay?” It’s a chagrined whisper. “i’m jus’ makin’ a fuss over _nothing_. sorry, bro. m’sorry, okay? i’m okay.”

“DON’T TOUCH ME,” Papyrus adds as Sans’s bony fingers come down from his face and reach out to hug him. Sans’s eye lights come back to flicker, and his face tries to crumple against itself as he draws his phalanges back sharply to run along his fixed grin, utterly crushed.

“NO, NO! THERE’S NOTHING-! I MEANT, YOU DON’T KNOW THIS SINCE I’VE NEVER TOLD YOU BEFORE, AND INCIDENTALLY HAVE NEVER SPOKEN BEFORE OF COURSE, BUT! WHEN YOU TOUCH MY BONES!! I CAN TELL _EXACTLY_ WHAT YOU’RE FEELING,” Papyrus hastens to reassure him. He’s not sure if it’s working, but at least Sans’s phalanges are clutching at his lab coat now instead of his own face. “YOU MAY ALSO BE ABLE TO TELL WHAT… AH. I CAN’T HELP IT, BUT I WANT YOU TO BE ABLE TO LIE TO ME IF YOU WANT TO. IT’S NOT FAIR OTHERWISE, RIGHT?”

Sans just kneels there in front of him clicking his fingers against each other, teeth parted the small amount they’re able. Papyrus decides not to tell him about the hem of his shirt.

“IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO HUG ME DESPITE THIS, YOU MAY,” he tries.

“how long you been able to talk, paps?”

“PAPYRUS. SLIGHTLY LESS THAN FIVE MINUTES, OR WHATEVER THE EQUIVALENT IS IN OUR CURRENT TEMPORAL CIRCUMSTANCES. ALSO, I LOVE YOU. THANK YOU FOR BEING MY BROTHER.”

“sorry,” he drones, still gaping. “love you too. s’jus’ kinda hard for me t’say it all the way.”

“I-OF COURSE,” Papyrus allows, feeling slightly chastened. The impediment. After all, even Papyrus doesn’t always think “WingDings: Alternate for Garamond-Aster” or “Comic Sans (Serif) M(icro)S(oft).” Gaster had wondered in Papyrus’s hearing if the same impediment might be true of “the child.”

Meaning Papyrus of course, since he’d started to suspect that despite the trouble involved in gauging the passage of time here (since it doesn’t actually _go_ anywhere), his continued juvenile silence might in fact be prolonged. Perhaps due to his combination of traits: bravery and integrity, leading to agitation, delayed maturity, and intemperate behavior. Gaster had also mused in both their hearing that Sans’s traits, justice and patience, made a funny sort of joke.

After all, what use was justice if it came too late?

Worse than none at all, really.

More like an accessory after the fact.

“I AM A BROTHER, TOO,” he tries after a few more seconds of watching Sans stare blankly at the floor.

“huh. like me?”

“YES. I’M LIKE YOU,” Papyrus agrees fervently. He feels relieved.

“i’m pretty hungry, paps. you hungry like me?”

“I DON’T THINK WE SHOULD TELL HIM.”

Sans’s eye lights flicker again. “huh?”

“OUR BROTHER. LET’S NOT TELL HIM I CAN TALK YET. I’M-”

Sans scoops him up suddenly, then sets him on his broad ilium like he always does, staggers to his feet.

“okay, bro,” he whispers breathlessly. “s’okay. we don’t gotta tell him anything til you’re ready. don’t you worry. nothin’s gonna-nothing will happen you’re not ready for, okay? nothin’s gonna happen.”

He stands there panting shallowly, neither shuffling toward the other room where they usually eat, nor looking at anything in particular.

Nothing in this room. Certainly not the table.

“nothing will happen,” he whispers absently.

Nothing fills his vision until it’s all he sees; Papyrus watches it happen.

He puts his carefully clothed arms around his brother’s neck and gives him a squeeze.

“I’D LIKE SOMETHING TO COVER MY HANDS WITH,” he says after a minute.

 

Gaster gets what he wants no matter what, just takes it and leaves right after like he always does. It seems like the only thing he won’t take is Sans to the other room, so Papyrus faces the wall and hears nothing, stays silent. At least Sans can go to the other room afterwards to clean up now, and he discovers he should take a minute when he can. Just long enough to soothe the pain out, to turn the retching noise into a soft exhale that makes his voice sound more like his own again. He’s curled up small, pressed face-and-knees against the wall behind a closed door and under another table, each brother facing a wall that’s as far away as he’s allowed to go. It’s still a sound Papyrus shouldn’t hear but he can’t begrudge it, either. There’s not enough space and no privacy, and there isn’t anything wrong with wanting to feel clean.

 

“I have unfortunate news,” Gaster sighs in disappointment. “The clean room... isn’t, anymore. The mechanism’s full of it now.”

“sorry, bro. ends up getting everywhere, huh? guess we just gotta do our best, then,” Comic Sans reassures after a long beat of silence.

“That might not be good enough.”

“s’okay if it’s not. nothin’s perfect, right?”

“I don’t find that particularly reassuring, but I appreciate the thought.”

“maybe we should...try an make the best of it,” Sans continues after a while. “take a lil break, maybe? get a real place, stead a squattin down here like we’re not even...like we’re jus’ visiting. something more like home for the kiddo, ya know?”

Gaster doesn’t say anything.

“real house, maybe,” Sans adds quietly. “for babybones here.”

“The child. Do you really think giving up so soon is the best example to set? That’s always been your flaw, Comic Sans. Not that you can help it, of course. You merely follow your nature, as we all must. As I must to persevere, to maintain. No matter how long it takes.”

“not too sure that means as much as it used to, g,” Sans tries in a lighter tone, despite his defeat. “how old am i now, anyways?”

Gaster laughs quietly. “No way to know, of course. But imagine if we managed to finally breach the barrier. The observations we could make from the surface would far surpass anything we can manage in here. All of this finally coming loose would of course disrupt things greatly for a time, especially toward the epicenter. The longer it goes on, the worse it will be when the bubble finally bursts.”

They both hear the musing tone that means he’ll go on in this vein for a while. Sans sits down to take the extra weight off his fused tibia and talus; Papyrus holds his brother close, lays his skull carefully on the white-clad shoulder.

“I wonder how old I am as well. I was already several hundred years old when we came here. Age without years feels arbitrary, doesn’t it? Not scientific at all. That might change on the surface. I say “the child”, but “the infant” might be closer to the truth, even with their speech delay. I’m sure that’s what it is, now. Especially among humanity, if we can even call it that, in their current state. You might be considered...what, twelve of their years? Fourteen?”

“i’m grown,” Sans says defensively. “much as i _can_ be, anyhow. you said it yourself.”

“It’s hard to believe _we_ were ever like them, isn’t it?”

“dunno bout that. they’re shaped the same inside, right? no way to know without any of em down here.”

Gaster sighs. “It’s too bad there aren’t. Then perhaps I wouldn’t have to do this anymore.”

Papyrus feels a chill without cold; his brother shivers in a way that can only be felt, not seen. It’s better not to be seen.

“However, since there’s no one but me to make you produce, so I’ll persevere despite our limitations. In order to overcome, we must sometimes act against our nature. In order to preserve what we must, we must sometimes embrace our opposites. Embrace chaos.”

Papyrus squeezes his brother imperceptibly as he stops breathing.

“Embrace chaos,” he whispers again.

“s’like he doesn’t even remember what he says,” Sans’s hand flexes inadvertently against his back, pitched so only Papyrus can perceive his speech. The soft, baglike mittens they’ve both adopted help a lot to further their goal of deception, and Gaster doesn’t much care what either of them wear. They both know that look, and it doesn’t bode well. There’s not even anything that needs fueling right now, other than the big one. The big one always needs something, so there’s always a reason. Isn’t there.

When justice waits too long, there’s only justification.

Sans stands up reluctantly, puts Papyrus down on the floor as fear coils in his spine, his skull. Makes its home in his bones, carving out a shape into him that he doesn’t like very much at all. He hates it; wants to chase it away.

But what can he do?

Maybe he really is just a nameless babybones, silent and helpless.

“PERHAPS OUR NATURES ARE OPEN TO INTERPRETATION.”

Papyrus hears his own harsh, conversational caw fill the room, much to everyone’s surprise. Especially his own.

“LIKE A ZODIAC SIGN, MAYBE. A HOROSCOPE IS LIKE A PUZZLE, JUST WAITING TO BE SOLVED BY A CONSCIENTIOUS AND DEDICATED SKELETON WILLING TO APPLY HIMSELF.

“How delightful,” Gaster whispers.

Sans’s teeth part as he stares at Papyrus in shock. There’s no betrayal on his face; Papyrus feels relieved. Just surprise, then concern. Resignation, eventually. But that’s his usual expression, so no conflict has been introduced between them.

“Papyrus, isn’t it?”

Papyrus nods cautiously.

“So glad you can finally join us,” Gaster says, every sign insisting that he is no more and no less than as delighted as he professes to be by Papyrus’s apparently recent capacity to express his font. “Are you also a brother?”

Papyrus nods again, even more cautiously.

“I’d tell you not to be afraid, but that isn’t really possible, is it.”

It’s not a question.

“You have, and will have, many, many talents. Some are innate, while others will have yet to be discovered. They come with a price, unfortunately, but nothing is gained without one. There can be no fulfillment without the presence of a need. You have such a fascinating journey ahead of you, Papyrus.”

“I AM VERY TALENTED.” Papyrus doesn’t mention anything about his bones. “I AM SURE I HAVE MUCH TO LEARN DESPITE THIS. I AM VERY YOUNG, AFTER ALL.”

Gaster’s flexible grin softens, and his eye sockets change shape to indicate that he’s pleased by Papyrus’s response, his headstrong assertion of his own worth. His face looks much more like Papyrus’s than it does Sans’s, whose grin stays fixed no matter what he feels. It’s more expressive, and Gaster doesn’t have to tear up his food the way Sans does.

“I’m glad I requested another brother before I left,” Gaster remarks. “However, that does not mean your brother is not extremely talented as well. When I discovered what he can do, it’s possible I should have joined him to the ones who make siblings. But how could I give him to anyone else when I love him so much? He’s so unique. And I certainly couldn’t tell them _how_ I found out he can produce,” he adds, smiling as if he and Papyrus are sharing in a joke of some kind; Papyrus manages not to scream.

He decides he agrees with Sans; for someone spinning webs of complex justifications almost constantly, Gaster really doesn’t seem to remember or acknowledge what he easily admits at other times.

As if words spoken to Papyrus and Sans don’t really matter, since theirs don’t matter to him. Their words disappear as soon as they’re spoken, their shapes distorted into whatever Gaster decides.

Like they’re not even here at all.

Regardless of their response, the outcome will always be the same.

Gaster visibly gets an idea, managing to seem excited without disturbing his eternal calm in the slightest. “In fact, I think you should know that he still has hidden potential, too.” He gives Papyrus an evaluating look. “You can learn now? And remember?”

“...YES?” Papyrus confirms hesitantly. He’s been able to do that since he first came into existence, but apparently that hadn’t been expected of him before now. He’s not entirely sure what Gaster’s getting at, but then he sees Sans’s face. It’s carefully blank.

Papyrus feels fear. It’s bitter.

“Our brother is very special, Papyrus. But he is also fragile.” His skull turns, and long, bare phalanges beckon. “Come here, Comic Sans. I think your brother should see how you work, so he doesn’t accidentally injure you. He must familiarize himself with your condition as soon as possible. He’s going to be much taller and stronger than you, after all; moreso than myself, even. It’s never to early to learn boundaries and limitations.”

Sans’s face stays neutral as he comes to kneel in front of Papyrus, and Papyrus thinks he’s doing a good job, too. He’s being very brave, after all. He can’t help it; that’s the only way to chase out the fear before it twists him into something even he might not recognize.

No, no. He’s fine. Papyrus _knows_ who he is.

Sans apparently realizes keeping his gaze averted isn’t really an option, so instead the foci in his sockets make panicked, humiliated contact with Papyrus’s as Gaster’s cheerful voice explains how his eyes work, first in simple terms, then more complex ones. He removes Sans’s clothing while he does so, then points out the fused bones one by one. By touching them. Repeatedly.

By the time Gaster gets to the malformed pelvis Sans’s neutral expression is starting to slip, and there might not actually be anything underneath. Or maybe just nothing Papyrus might recognize. Even worse, he looks like he might make a noise; they stare at each other knowing that if he does that right now there won’t be _anything_ left, recognizable or not.

Papyrus feels something orange make a suggestion, and he eases one of his hands free of the mitten. Something dark blue tells Sans without words that despite how it seems, there’s _plenty_ of room, regardless of the fact that Papyrus is close enough that he manages to click a finger to his patella for a split second.

He looks hard with intent at the pips floating in his brother’s dark sockets.

There’s more _space_ than he realizes.

In fact, he can just _take a_ _little_ _break_ _right now_ , if he wants to.

Sans looks surprised, then relieved and grateful for a long moment before he takes the opportunity to go Somewhere Else for a little while. He’s still right here of course, being prodded and manipulated, but Papyrus keeps his attention fixed on his brother’s foci even after they dim and fade almost to nonexistence. He lets Gaster’s voice wash over him; he can repeat back by rote without actually absorbing any of the awful things he has absolutely no intention of learning. Sans’s frail, tiny body complies with Gaster’s instructions like a bone puppet, fixed grin passive as his parts and functions are explained, then exhibited.

Sans doesn’t make a single sound, just pants shallowly as Gaster demonstrates how and where to cause pain without causing damage, and in sufficient amounts to provoke the appropriate response. Not a sound even when the glow fills the room, when it gets twice as bright.

Papyrus ironically considers that he _has_ learned something after all. As it turns out, this is much worse when you can also see it. Gaster just breathes heavily, lecture forgotten. He doesn’t notice a thing.

 

 

 

“It will be enough, eventually,” Gaster announces calmly. “It’s cumulative, so...what’s the formula again, Sans?”

He tells him. “bout five years, far’s i can tell,” he adds, knowing Gaster can’t come to the same conclusion as quickly, or even the correct one, sometimes. “no way ta tell how long that’ll really be though. changes too much, haven't found a pattern yet.” There’s a new flatness in his brother’s voice lately, but Gaster doesn't seem to know or care.

“We might be able to halve that,” Gaster rambles cheerfully; he doesn’t look up to see Sans frown in confusion.

“Papyrus can do his part in another year or two at most. I’m sure of it.”

“...what’re you sayin’, g?” It’s a horrified whisper.

“Twice the amount, half the time. Come now, you’re the mathematical prodigy.” His voice is fond, lightly teasing. “If he hasn’t learned how to make you produce yet by watching, I’ll just teach him myself.”

Sans and Papyrus freeze like mice on the unmoored walkway over the pit, then immediately try to make it seem like they haven’t.

Sans is silent, Papyrus is invisible. Their gazes lock for a long moment, but their brother hasn’t noticed.

Neither feels relieved.

Instead, Papyrus removes his mitten and extends his bare-boned hand slowly toward Sans.

He waits, fixed grin flattened and unsure. Papyrus nods reassuringly; their brother still tinkers and putters in the background, utterly unconcerned.

Sans drops his eye lights to Papyrus’s hand. He pulls off a mitten and takes the cold, steady phalanges into his own.

Of course, Papyrus lets him know.

Of course, Sans understands right away.

Sans looks up to meet his gaze again, and they don’t look at anything but each other as Sans’s sockets go blank. A surprised utterance happens somewhere else (Very Else) before it’s immediately cut off by several shockingly loud cracks, like a tree being repeatedly struck by lightning. They both shut their sockets as a brief but intense white light blots out the room, bathing the children harmlessly before they open them again. Sans’s harsh grin flattens as his socket flashes yellow and cyan, and after a moment a balm of welcome heat rises up from the pit they’re suspended over. In the background, the big machine whirs to life, and most of the other room’s panels light up cheerfully.

“he won’t ever be gone,” Sans informs him conversationally. “s’okay though. he can’t do anything bout it anymore.” He pants through his teeth for a moment, then stills. “he knows what he did.”

“AND YOU KNOW HOW THEY ALL WORK?” Papyrus says in his quiet, harsh voice.

“sure thing, bro.” Sans’s tranquil tone is deceptive, but he’s telling the truth. “piece a cake, cause i remember _everything_.” He lets out a quiet, humorless chuckle. “can’t really help that, can i? jus’ how i’m made, i guess,” he rambles, face drifting askew and eyes dimming. “too bad, cause-”

He cuts off when Papyrus tilts his head at him like a curious snowdrake.

“YOU WOULD... _LIKE_ TO FORGET THIS HAPPENED?” Papyrus offers tentatively.

Sans’s sockets so perfectly round, points inside darting to the side for a split second before returning.

“you sayin’ you can do something like that?”

Papyrus nods slowly.

“yeah,” he breathes, hands beginning to shake visibly. “paps, _please_ … a-all of it, if you… _everything_ , okay? can you really-”

He cuts off again at Papyrus’s second, less patient nod.

“FOR YOU, ABSOLUTELY. FOR EVERYONE ELSE WHO KNOWS OF US, I CAN ONLY ASK. BUT I FEEL WE HAVE A VERY GOOD REASON, AND I AM SURE THEY WILL BE WILLING TO ACCOMMODATE OUT OF COMPASSION, OR MERELY CONVENIENCE AND THEIR OWN COMFORT. AFTER ALL, NOTHING OF VALUE HAS BEEN LOST, AND WE’VE DONE THEM A SERVICE. WE CAN CONTINUE TO DO SO, AS WELL. I THINK WE SHOULD.”

He squeezes Sans’s cloth-covered hand as his brother nods in agreement one last time, then lets go. Rather than putting his own mittens back on he bares his other hand, flexes his extraordinarily long phalanges.

“I WOULD PREFER THIS FOR MYSELF AS WELL.” It won’t ever be gone, but he doesn’t have to know that.

Sans bows his head for a long moment, and when he looks back up his magic runs down the deep grooves under his sockets. “a course, bro,” he whispers regretfully. “sorry. ’course you do. ‘m real sorry bout _everything_ , okay?”

“YOU’VE DONE NOTHING WRONG,” Papyrus reassures him, feeling sick with fear, filled to the brim with certainty that he and his brother have made the least terrible decision left to them. Who knows if it is the right one, but it’s the best he can do.

He wants to scream, and then keep screaming. Also to never stop. The screaming, that is.

“ABSOLUTELY _NONE_ OF THIS IS YOUR FAULT. IT NEVER HAS BEEN. AS A REMINDER, I WILL BE SURE TO INFORM YOU OF YOUR FLAWS AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY, THEREFORE SPARING YOU FROM HAVING TO _IMAGINE_ FLAWS TO HAVE. IMAGINING YOU DESERVED THOSE TERRIBLE THINGS, FOR EXAMPLE, OR THAT YOU COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING TO STOP IT.”

“i shoulda stopped it a long time ago, babybones,” Sans rasps jaggedly, shaking his head as he hugs himself. “then _you_ wouldn’t ever’ve had to see-”

“ **I AM PAPYRUS** ,” he interrupts compassionately. “I WILL ALWAYS KNOW WHO _I_ AM, THEREFORE YOU WILL ALWAYS KNOW WHO _YOU_ ARE. **YOU WILL** _ **KNOW**_ **THAT YOU ARE GOOD, BECAUSE YOU ARE** _ **MY**_ _ **BROTHER**_ **.** DOES THAT SOUND FAIR?”

Sans just stares at him helplessly, magic dripping off his chin. He doesn’t understand, but that’s okay. The only truly fair thing would be if none of this had ever happened, so Papyrus will do the next best thing. He’ll make it so he doesn’t remember anything except what’s most important, so maybe some day he _will_ be able to understand.

“will you do me first?” Sans whispers, a hollow echo of hope coming into his voice for the first time in Papyrus’s memory, then he immediately flinches. Hurrying’s not his nature, and neither is hope. So he’s been told. “that selfish of me?”

“YES, AND NO,” Papyrus replies easily, his hands coming up to touch Sans’s broad, grinning face, tilting it to peer into his sockets carefully. “IN THAT ORDER.” He can feel the faint flicker of Sans’s hope now, and he’ll do what he can to keep it alive. See if they can survive this somehow. “I THINK I’M GOING TO START COINING PHRASES. THE FIRST BEING, ‘WATER SHOULD GO WHERE THE FIRE IS HOTTEST.’ HOW DOES THAT SOUND?”

He watches carefully as Sans’s eye lights shift in diameter to keep focus on his brother’s face, even as he lifts his chin until he can only see in his peripheral primary. Despite himself, he _had_ learned quite a bit about how his brother works eventually. He supposes that’s the value and detriment of repetition, even if he doesn’t have Sans’s near-eidetic memory. He’ll have no need for knowledge about his brother’s body from now on, so he can forget all about that, too.

Papyrus feels relieved. Sans relaxes a little.

“sounds pretty cool, if ya ask me. and you did. you’re the coolest, bro.”

A rare, real smile softens Sans’s face. He’s telling the truth.

“NYEH HEH HEH. I AGREE. ARE YOU READY?”

“sooner the better.” He doesn't flinch this time.

Papyrus takes his hands away from Sans’s face, but they return to tilt his head again, judging the angle. He touches the edges of his brother’s sockets, makes one more minute adjustment. Sans’s hands relax away from himself to rest on the ground in front of him.

Papyrus carefully slides his hands into Sans’s eye sockets up to the wrist, a knuckle or two rasping slightly against the orbitals. Sans inhales deep and slow as Papyrus’s bony fingers disrupt the field of his eyes, all three dimensions of his vision going dark at once.

“DOES IT HURT?” he asks curiously.

“i’m feelin’ better already,” Sans answers quietly. He’s telling the truth, since he didn’t actually answer the question Papyrus had asked him. Well, hopefully this is the last time he’ll endure any discomfort at the hands of someone he loves. Papyrus soothes himself with the assurance that he can join Sans soon enough as he starts to move his fingers in an unraveling pattern that broadens slowly, making sure his wrists don’t touch the edges at all. They could both use a little privacy, something they haven’t ever really had.

After a long time, he speaks.

“I THINK I SHOULD STOP HERE,” he intones quietly.

“nah,” Sans replies in a dreamy voice, with a warm edge to it that makes Papyrus slightly worried and somewhat uncomfortable. “s’not gone yet. from before, too. all of it.”

A bit of magic trickles from the inner corners of his sockets; slides down the deep grooves beneath them. Papyrus makes sure it doesn’t touch him; he doesn’t touch his bones, either.

“ARE YOU SURE?” Papyrus considers hesitantly, but Sans is quiet even though he’s been kneeling here much longer than he should, sitting heavily on his fused ankle. One hand is still mittened and one is bare, the phalanges curled up passively where they rest on the walkway between them. “YOU MIGHT NEED TO KNOW WHAT YOU ARE IN THE FUTURE, HOW... IT WORKS. WHAT CAN HAPPEN. DON’T YOU THINK SO?” There’s still no answer, but he keeps going, carefully saving this for last. “ALSO, ISN’T THIS… UNPLEASANT?” Papyrus certainly isn’t looking forward to doing this to himself, although he definitely _is_ looking forward to the results.

“nah, bro,” Sans replies quietly, the edge coming back stronger as a light touch of iridescence ghosts over the bones below Papyrus’s constantly working wrists. Sans’s next exhale’s a subvocal whine, terrified and disgusted.

“feels real good,” he adds in a slow, thick slur. “get rid of it _all_.”

Papyrus finishes as quickly as he can after that, caution giving way to near-panicked haste. It’s the only mercy he can give to both of them now, which is still one more option than he’d had before.

 

 

 

Asgore leans his head out into the corridor, looks both ways for one of the other skeletons before looking back down at the top of Papyrus’s skull. He must be lost. Then he jumps as the child begins to speak in a clear, harsh voice.

“IT’S JUST ME, YOUR MAJ-”

“Asgore,” he corrects, astounded. “You can speak? I am-”

“YOUR ASGORE,” Papyrus accedes impatiently. “I NEED TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT SOMETHING VERY UPSETTING, BUT VERY IMPORTANT. VERY QUICKLY, AND VERY NOW. THAT’S FOUR VERYS, SO I’M SURE YOU CAN ACCOMMODATE.”

“I….would you like some tea, child?”

Papyrus thinks about it. “YES, BUT I WON’T TAKE YOU UP ON THAT SINCE I DON’T WANT SANS TO WAKE UP BEFORE WE’RE FINISHED.” He sighs, then enters the King’s chambers. Apparently he’d been sleeping, which Papyrus never really understood until he’d seen Sans decide to do it just a few minutes ago. It’s still not for him, but to each his own. Sans had told him long ago that Asgore had plenty of reasons not to want to face himself all the time, maybe take a break from seeing what he is and thinking about the things he’s done.

Sans’s magic should never touch Asgore. Unless he asks someday, maybe. Will he?

He’s getting distracted again. That won’t do; there’s not enough time. There’s all the time in the universe down here, and none of it’s for him.

“YOU KNOW OF MY BROTHERS, CORRECT?”

“Of course,” the massive king says kindly, sitting down and gesturing to the chair opposite him. “One of them is my Royal Scientist, after all. Are they okay? Is there an emergency of some kind?”

“NO AND YES. IN THAT ORDER.”

He leans forward to get up as Papyrus sighs in annoyance.

“I’M SIGHING IN ANNOYANCE, YOUR ASGORE. IT NEEDS TO BE TAKEN CARE OF _HERE_. I’M GOING TO ASK YOU TO FORGET THAT ONE OF THEM EVER EXISTED, OFFER ASSISTANCE ON BEHALF OF MYSELF AND SANS, AND TO ASK FOR A HOUSE.”

“A….what?” Asgore tries.

“A HOUSE. FORGETTING. ASSISTANCE.”

Asgore gapes at him.

“I HAVE GOOD REASONS. THE FIRST OF WHICH BEING THAT MY BROTHER GASTER HAS BEEN RAPING SANS, MY OTHER BROTHER, SINCE HE WAS YOUNGER THAN I AM NOW. PERHAPS EVEN SINCE HE WAS BORN, WHICH WOULD MAKE SENSE SINCE WHAT HE DID TO HIS SOUL SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE. I DO NOT KNOW SINCE I DID NOT YET-”

Papyrus blinks his sockets. He’s not exactly the best at reading facial expressions, but he’s sure he’s never seen one like that before. Then again, he’s very young so maybe that makes sense. Regardless, there’s nothing for it but to continue.

“HE IS NO LONGER ABLE TO DO THIS FOR A FEW REASONS. PRIMARILY THAT GASTER IS NO LONGER ABLE TO DO MUCH OF ANYTHING EVER AGAIN, OTHER THAN FUEL THE MACHINE HE BUILT TO POWER THE UNDERGROUND AND SUSTAIN ITS INTEGRITY IN PERPETUITY.”

“Gaster is...dead?” Asgore gasps.

“NOT REALLY,” Papyrus admits. “DEATH IS JUST ANOTHER MUCH OF ANYTHING HE CAN NO LONGER DO. I AM SATISFIED WITH THAT CONSIDERING THE CIRCUMSTANCES, AS SHOULD YOU BE.”

“How...how could I not have _known_ _this was happening_?” Asgore sobs.

“NO ONE KNEW,” Papyrus points out. “OTHER THAN GASTER AND SANS. AND MYSELF,” he adds, even though it’s obvious, “SINCE MOST OF THE TIME HE DID IT IN FRONT OF ME. IN FACT,” the expression’s back, but Papyrus just ignores it this time, “IT BECAME APPARENT EARLIER TODAY THAT I WOULD BE EXPECTED TO ALSO RAPE SANS ONCE I BECAME PHYSICALLY CAPABLE, OR FORCED TO SOMEHOW IF I DID NOT WILLINGLY COMPLY. ONCE IT DID, GASTER HAD A TERRIBLE ACCIDENT AND FELL INTO THE CORE, CONVENIENTLY PROVIDING AS MUCH FUEL AS NECESSARY FOR IT UNTIL THE END OF TIME ITSELF.”

Papyrus allows a minute or two, as closely as he can gauge it at least, for Asgore to weep quietly.

“IT IS _NEVER_ TOO LATE FOR JUSTICE,” he points out when he concludes the time for weeping is done, and the time for decisions should commence. Asgore’s tears help no one but himself, after all. He angles his sockets at the massive monster in front of him. “YOU SHOULD MAKE A POINT TO ASK MY BROTHER ABOUT THAT WHEN YOU GET THE CHANCE.” There’s only one now, and soon there only will ever have been one. That is also just, in his opinion. It’s only an opinion, though. Sans has a bit of an advantage there, speaking of which...

IN FACT, HE’LL NEED A JOB. SEVERAL, IF YOU CAN MANAGE IT, TO MAXIMIZE HIS CHANCES TO AVOID DOING THEM. HE IS CAPABLE OF MAINTENANCE, IMPROVEMENT, AND REPAIR ON ALL SYSTEMS IMPLEMENTED HERE SINCE OUR ARRIVAL. HE CAN ALSO JUDGE THE ABSOLUTE ETHICAL AND MORAL QUALITY OF YOUR INFINITE SOUL AS SHAPED BY CHOICES YOU HAVE MADE, AND HE’S FAIRLY GOOD AT MATH. I’M SURE YOU’LL FIND SOMETHING FOR HIM. PERHAPS HAVING ENOUGH JOBS, HE’LL BE ABLE TO FORGET HIS REAL ONE EVENTUALLY.”

“What is his real job?” the king whispers.

“TO KILL A CHILD,” Papyrus answers. “I’M SURE YOU CAN RELATE.”

“WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THAT RIGHT NOW,” Papyrus adds after Asgore resumes weeping. “I NEED TO KNOW IF YOU BELIEVE MY REASONS ARE GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU TO COMPLY WITH MY REQUEST.”

“You can...make me _forget_ your brother Gaster ever existed?” Asgore looks afraid. This time Papyrus can relate. “What… what _are_ you?”

“I AM A SKELETON,” Papyrus answers easily. “MY NAME IS PAPYRUS, SINCE I BELIEVE I MAY HAVE INADVERTENTLY OMITTED THAT PART. I AM VERY GREAT. I _SHOULD_ ALSO BE A CHILD, BUT UNFORTUNATELY I WAS NOT AFFORDED THAT OPPORTUNITY. NOR WAS MY BROTHER, WHICH IS WHY I HAVE ALSO COME TO REQUEST A HOUSE IN WHICH WE WILL BE ABLE TO TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER”

Papyrus frowns a moment, looking very, very old.

“AND POSSIBLY LEARN HOW TO BE CHILDREN IN OUR OWN WAY, I SUPPOSE.”

Asgore still looks afraid. “What kind of house do you want?”

“ONE AS FAR FROM HERE AS POSSIBLE.”

“How...will you make me forget, then?”

“I CANNOT _MAKE_ YOU DO ANYTHING,” he reassures him, voice harsh but gentle. “I CAN ONLY PROVE BEYOND DOUBT THAT WHAT I SAY IS TRUE, AND IN THE PROCESS REQUEST THAT YOU FORGET ALL OF IT. I HAVE NEVER AND _WILL_ NEVER FORCE ANYONE TO DO ANYTHING; I AM MERELY _EXTREMELY_ _CONVINCING_.”

“I cannot argue with that,” Asgore whispers dryly.

“NYEH HEH HEH,” Papyrus giggles bitterly, removing his mittens. “YOU’RE WELCOME.”

 

 

“heya, bro,” Sans says mildly, white pips coalescing in his sockets as he opens them. “where’re we at? how long was i out for, huh?”

“WE ARE AT OUR HOUSE,” Papyrus informs him. “IT’S A REAL HOUSE, SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN. YOU WERE FEELING ILL, BUT YOU’RE MUCH BETTER NOW THAT YOU’VE RESTED.”

“huh. feels kinda like that makes sense. why don’t i...”

“THIS IS OUR HOME TO STAY IN AS LONG AS WE WOULD LIKE,” Papyrus interrupts as soothingly as his voice allows, and Sans’s sockets slip closed again.

“I TOO WILL BE SLIGHTLY ILL FOR A BIT. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH _YOUR_ ILLNESS, NOR THE FACT THAT I SOMEHOW KNOW THAT IT WILL HAPPEN,” he informs his brother archly. “YOU ONLY NEED TO COME TO YOUR ROOM IN... LET’S PRETEND IT’S AN HOUR, AND BRING ME SOMETHING TO EAT. I WILL RECOVER. THEN YOU WILL NEED TO TAKE CARE OF ME, AND PERHAPS FIND SOMETHING TO DO WITH YOUR TIME AS I GROW UP.”

“sounds good, bro. ‘m gonna get a nap in first, though.”

“SANS,” Papyrus sighs. “I DON’T KNOW IF YOU SHOULD SLEEP ALL THE TIME. IT SEEMS...EXCESSIVE.”

“nah. ’s fine.”

“I...” Papyrus trails off, thinks hard about several things for several long moments while his brother resumes snoring.

In his remarkably limited experience, people will believe what makes them comfortable, what helps them believe the world is fair without them having to do anything to make it so. The truth rarely does either of those, and Papyrus has noticed that the reasons he shows people to believe what they’d prefer to are nearly always good enough. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, and he’s perfectly willing to manipulate the tendency to allow his brother and himself what they should have had all along. It’s so much easier to believe nothing happened, and if it did, it couldn’t have been all that bad.

Comic Sans isn’t like that, though. Sans believes whatever hurts the most, because pain is the only thing he can rely on. Pain and pleasure are all he’s ever really known, and familiar pain might feel better than a kind of happiness he can barely recognize. Well. Not anymore, he hopes. But Papyrus had had to hurry, and he’d had to do a lot more than show him reasons. Based on the sleeping and the vagueness, it’s likely that Papyrus has caused some damage. He wishes he hadn’t, but if that had gone on any longer...well. At least Sans has a chance to know something else now, and at least this way there’s something left of _either_ of them.

Papyrus leaves him to sleep, heads towards a staircase. The steps are rather large, but he manages admirably, then hangs a right and heads to a door that he pushes open.

There’s a mirror leaned up against one wall, and he walks toward it until all he sees is himself.

His skull seems too large for his spindly body, still less than half the height of his congenitally undersized brother. Baglike mittens cover his hands, and his body is wrapped in soft clothes suitable for the toddler he appears to be.

“I DO NOT KNOW IF I MADE THE RIGHT DECISION,” he begins, looking at himself assessingly.

“BUT IF I AM SPEAKING TO ANYONE, THEN I KNOW THAT WE HAVE SOMETHING IN COMMON. WE HAVE DONE OUR BEST TO MAKE A DETERMINATION BASED ON WHAT WE KNOW IS TRUE, AND WHAT WE HOPE WILL HAPPEN.”

His tiny, harsh voice stops for a long moment, as he closes and opens his black, bottomless sockets.

“ANOTHER THING WE HAVE IN COMMON: WE ARE ALL OF A PIECE. I HAVE HAD TO ACCESS MYSELF, TO KNOW AND LEARN THINGS I AM NOT READY FOR, IN ORDER TO DO WHAT SEEMED NECESSARY. I DON’T KNOW IF IT WAS THE _RIGHT_ THING, BUT IT WAS THE BEST I COULD DO. I HAD THE BRAVERY TO RISK SOMETHING LIKE THAT. I ALSO LEARNED TO WALK LAST NIGHT ON RATHER SHORT NOTICE, AND THAT APPEARS TO BE GOING WELL SO FAR. I SHOULD BE PRAISED FOR THIS.”

Papyrus blinks again. The fear coils, waiting.

“I AM TOO YOUNG TO MAKE THESE KINDS OF DECISIONS. I MADE THEM ANYWAY.”

The fear pounces.

“NOW MY BROTHER AND I MUST LIVE WITH THE CONSEQUENCES FOR THE REMAINDER OF OUR EXISTENCE, WHICH IS METAPHYSICALLY INFINITE.”

Enough of that, he supposes.

“I DO NOT KNOW WHAT WE ARE, OR WHERE WE CAME FROM. MY BROTHER DID, BUT I WAS RUSHED IN ORDER TO SAVE WHAT I COULD, AND MUCH WAS LOST. WE ARE FROM SOMETIME ELSE. DUE TO A MATHEMATICAL ERROR, WE EXIST IN _ALL_ TIMES AND PLACES. WE ARE... ONE POSSIBLE OUTCOME; AN OUTCOME THAT WE ARE INTENDED TO EITHER ENSURE OR PREVENT. THIS IS CONTINGENT ON CIRCUMSTANCES I REMAIN IGNORANT OF, AND THAT MY BROTHER HAS INADVERTENTLY FORGOTTEN. I PLAN TO JOIN HIM IN A MOMENT.”

Papyrus sighs.

“PLEASE RESPECT MY DECISION. IN ORDER TO DO THAT, YOU MUST STAY AND WATCH WHAT I DO NEXT, AND KEEP WATCHING UNTIL I AM FINISHED. I DO NOT WISH TO REMEMBER WHAT I WILL HAVE FORGOTTEN.”

Papyrus slowly draws off his mittens, leans closer to the mirror and peers at his face carefully.

“IT’S THE LEAST YOU CAN DO.”

A single distal phalanx the size of a lost seed pearl questions the edge of an orbital bone.

“MY NAME IS PAPYRUS,” he begins calmly.

“I DO NOT KNOW WHAT WE ARE OR WHERE WE CAME FROM.”

His fingers rasp as they slowly slide into his oversized child’s eye sockets, which fit his tiny hands easily all the way to the carpals.

“ **ALL I HAVE EVER KNOWN IS MY BROTHER.”**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was very conflicted about including this chapter at all. But the entirety of the rest of this story has been written with this having happened: everything from Sans’s unusual forms of self-harm to Papyrus and Reader sharing integrity as a trait. I even considered putting it on its own, but I realized the only way it means what it needs to is within the context of the rest of the story, especially after various other things have been established.  
> There’s a poisonous sort of shame that tries to attach itself to you when you survive something that is so bad, so destructive to your selfhood and personhood, that you feel like it would have been better if you hadn’t. It tries to make you believe the only way to have any dignity is to destroy what’s left. I hate the idea that if you’re ever able to be okay (even once in a while), it means it ‘wasn’t really that bad’. It’s easy to internalize ideas like that. It’s easier to normalize the worst thing possible than accept the truth.  
> It absolutely was that bad. As bad as it gets. It’s still better to have survived than not. People are allowed to survive something this bad. If you’re not someone who needs to hear that, I am so very very glad. However if you are someone who needs to hear that I want to make sure that you do.  
> I wanted this chapter to be here because even though this happened, Sans is still allowed to explore and enjoy his sexuality, and Papyrus is still allowed to be whatever he is. They deserve happiness, to give and receive love on their own terms, to be okay sometimes even if they’re not-okay sometimes, to nurture and protect others, and to be all the other everyflavor-spaghetti things that compose their complicated and creative lives.  
> They are allowed to have a functional sibling relationship that’s loving, supportive, and works for them, even if it’s not perfect. Sans and Papyrus did not “end up” here. They were not broken or ruined. That’s not a thing that happens; people can’t be ruined. Time alone cannot change us from from being children who were hurt very badly, but other things can. We don’t “end up” because we are always still becoming, and it’s okay to ask for help.  
> Please keep any comments referring to the events of this chapter here out of respect for those who need to skip it.


	43. there is a myelitis that never goes out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER**  
>  This chapter contains frank discussion and explanation of child abuse and childhood sexual abuse, and the effects and repercussions thereof. It contains realistic responses to those discussions which aren’t necessarily what might be expected. It’s possible you might be able to glean this information for the plot from context later without this chapter, but I can’t guarantee it, so I understand completely if you need to bail. Ten thousand percent no hard feelings on that.
> 
> Mogwai – Take Me Somewhere Nice  
>  https://youtu.be/luM6oeCM7Yw

You keep watching because it’s the right thing to do. You watch an excruciatingly young Papyrus carefully make himself forget everything he’s ever known, erasing his capacity for speech just to make certain. He’s looking forward to learning again at a more natural rate, even considering the unfortunate temporal circumstances in the artificially created, completely closed system underground. Eventually, Papyrus’s tiny hands fall back out of his eye sockets with a rasp.

The first thing Papyrus remembers is how incredibly strange and startling it is to suddenly exist.

The first thing he _feels_ is of course the fear.

The second is the certainty that it will never leave him.

The third is his brother, who reaches for him to calm the loud, shrill fussing that began almost as soon as the fear did.

“heya, babybones. guess you’re hungry, right? you hungry like me?”

San’s voice is higher than it is now, but there’s a dullness in it that isn’t there anymore. He produces a bag of snacks from somewhere inside his white labcoat, opens it and brings it to his nasal cavity hesitantly, gives it a sniff. A crease appears between his sockets as Papyrus begins to fuss again.

In his haste Papyrus has also unintentionally caused them both to forget how to eat; you watch them relearn together, the slow progress that eventually turns into success. Sans is supporting Papyrus’s bare skull with his mittenless hand to help him; he feels bad that he can’t show him better since apparently his own mouth can barely open. But the only way it works is through his teeth; he finds this out the hard way. He and his brother are different for some reason. Sans is inexplicably flooded with hot, heavy shame because of this; his body is wrong, his face is wrong too. He looks weird when he eats, and any disparity between himself and Papyrus is to Sans’s detriment.

Then something happens, and the shame disappears like it never existed. Papyrus flinches, then leans his head away from Sans’s fingers, turns away to finish eating. Sans just looks at his tiny back in confusion; Papyrus glances over his shoulder to see him rummage in his white coat’s pocket for a mitten.

Sans sets Papyrus down very gently and stands up. He’s not more than an inch or two shorter than he is now, but he’s a lot more delicate and his proportions are different. All of his bones except his skull are are thinner and smaller, and his clothes hang from them instead of being filled out round with magic. He looks heartrendingly young, gets even smaller as he shrugs out of the heavy-looking coat and drops it, even though there’s a thick sweater underneath too. A ring of yellow-blue flashes in his left socket, and the coat meets its fate.

“gonna need a jacket, babybones,” he says, fixed grin softening as he tugs on his other mitten. “s’warm in here though, right? probably always gonna be. got a feeling s’gonna be cold outside, though...but that suits me jus’ fine. matter a fact, i think it’s real _cool_.”

Sans stoops down, scoops up Papyrus and sets him on his hip in a noticeably practiced motion. Curls his arm around protectively with a hesitant smile.

“just like my lil bro. real _cool_.”

Papyrus screams in mock outrage, and Sans giggles softly to himself. Then he stops, startled. It sounds...strange, but he likes it.

He shuffles slowly out the door, and you decide not to overstay your welcome. You don’t want to be rude, after all.

You pull away and sit up. The table in front of you has a sizable puddle of tears and...yep, snot too. huh.

You wipe your face with your sleeve, considering how interesting it is that you have no idea what’s happening next to you or slightly under the table, since you’re staring at the wall. You certainly don’t hear anything.

After a bit, Papyrus sits up too. Neither of you look at or touch the messes on the table.

“I SUPPOSE IT WAS BAD, THEN,” he sighs after a little while.

“About as bad as it gets, yeah,” you rasp quietly. “I have a question,” you add after a little longer.

“WHAT IS THE QUESTION?”

You think. “Will telling him what I... saw make him remember? Or...you?”

“THAT’S A GOOD QUESTION,” Papyrus admits. “I ALSO HAVE A QUESTION,” he adds after a while.

“What’s the question?”

“DID I DO THE RIGHT THING?”

“That’s a good question, too.”

You both stare at the wall a little longer while you sort out what’s important from all the things he doesn’t want to know. Shouldn’t have to know, hopefully ever.

“You were just a baby,” you answer eventually. “You still did the best you could in the circumstances you were faced with. When it’s that bad, all you can do is try to survive long enough do the right thing eventually. Everyone deserves a chance to try, and you gave yourself and your brother that chance.” You sigh regretfully. “I don’t know what a right thing to do even would have been. I don’t think there was one, but I think you made the best choice you could.”

You don’t hear or see anything for as long as Papyrus needs.

“NOTHING CAN MAKE HIM REMEMBER,” he answers reluctantly. Eventually. “I SUPPOSE IT IS UP TO YOU TO TELL HIM WHAT HE NEEDS TO KNOW. AND TO DECIDE WHAT THAT IS, SINCE I CAN’T. BUT DON’T...” He makes a rather unfortunate sort of noise. “DON’T EVER TELL ME,” he croaks harshly.

“I’m-”

“NO ONE IS HAPPY WITH THIS,” he adds.

“No,” you agree slowly.

“I WILL BE IN MY ROOM FOR THE NEXT TWELVE HOURS. AFTER THAT I WILL BE UNAVAILABLE FOR AN UNDETERMINED AMOUNT OF TIME, IF NOTHING PREVENTS IT BEFORE THEN.”

“Sounds like a plan, Stan,” you sigh. The chair creaks as Papyrus gets up. He makes another odd noise, exhales. You feel a gloved hand pat your back for a moment, then you hear him leave.

You stare at the wall for a little while longer. Then you stand as well, leave the room and go back to the living room. Sans is awake and sitting up when you enter, watches you quietly as you come and sit next to him on the couch. You both turn toward each other, and you both lean your heads against the couch. You reach out at the same time to touch hands, play with each other’s fingers for a few minutes.

“guess it worked.”

You sigh. “It did.”

“that bad, huh?”

“About as bad as it gets,” you repeat honestly. Eventually you look up from your hands to his face. He looks...perturbed, but less so than you’d feared. “What do you want to know?”

His eye lights harden as he meets your gaze. “why’m i like this? not…my face.” You’d had a feeling he’d ask this first, instead of the other questions. “that weird feeling i get sometimes, when... you _know_ what i mean.” When he doesn’t feel right.

He already suspects the answer to this one, probably has for a long time. So you tell him.

“You were sexually abused for your entire childhood. Maybe since you were born.”

He exhales slowly as he absorbs that, but you can tell it’s pretty much what he expected.

After all, he knows he doesn’t do things for no reason. He always has a reason, and it’s usually personal.

“who did it?” he asks quietly.

You try and think about how to answer that. Linear time’s a real bitch, sometimes. Ha. Some...times.

“He’s dead,” you lie easily. In fact, he’d been compressed into a deathless one-dimensional point of antimatter and dropped into the Core to fuel it for as long as time exists, but Sans doesn’t really need to know that. He also doesn’t need to know that he’d been the one to do it, after receiving nonverbal instruction as to how from a Papyrus barely out of infancy.

“who was he?” he insists. You kind of wish he didn’t, but it’s up to him.

“Another brother, yours and Papyrus’s. Older by a lot.”

He still flinches. “what was his name?”

You exhale slowly. “You called him-”

“changed my mind,” he rasps suddenly, interrupting you. “don’t tell me that.”

“I won’t,” you promise, squeezing his fingers and waiting patiently to see if he has more questions for you. He does.

“what am i?”

You purse your lips. “I still don’t exactly know, but… you’re...” you frown.

“You’re a possibility of what humans will eventually become if certain conditions are met. You’re from… ‘sometime else’, and you got here using the machine you have in your basement now. The reason you’re here is because you’re supposed to either prevent that from happening, or ensure that it does. I don’t know which, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t actually matter anymore.”

Well, that’s going over like a lead balloon.

“are you saying i’m human?” he whispers, horrified.

“ _No_ ,” you reassure emphatically. “You’re _not human_. You’re exactly what you are: a skeleton. So is Papyrus, and you’re his brother.” Reiterating that makes his shoulders relax a little; you’re glad you added it. “You also exist in ‘every time and place’, although I don’t actually understand what that means. The reason for _that_ is a mathematical error, and it sure as hell wasn’t yours.”

He believes you. Good, since it’s true.

“why’s my body like this? am i sick?”

You feel relieved to be asked something with a simple, relatively neutral answer.

“You’re not sick, as far as I know. You have a congenital condition of some kind. There’s no reason for it; it just happened like it does with anyone. It’s why you’re fragile, why some of your bones are fused or shaped different, why you’re smaller than Papyrus…” Well, maybe not entirely neutral. “Why you’re infertile,” you finish reluctantly.

“what was that thing that happened?” he rasps. “what _is_ that stuff, really?”

“It’s something your body makes when… instead of making a child. When magic that would normally be-” what had Alphys said? “- _catalytic_ goes in there, your soul changes it somehow so it can be rejected. That _all_ it is. You just turn it into something else so it can come back out; it’s not alive. It’s not anything bad, but if you don’t… remove it afterward, you’ll get sick. You might even get sick enough to die eventually, but I’m not really sure. I think you have to be the one to take it out, but you already know how so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

He looks very thoughtful for a long time, in a rather unfortunate way.

“guess it’s valuable though, right? maybe that’s why-”

“ _ **No**_ ,” you interrupt quickly. “ **That’s not why.** ”

Shit. He doesn’t believe you. “People who do things like _that_ don’t _need reasons_. The same way no matter what the reason was, someone who isn't like that would never do it.”

“tell me why.”

“This part’s really bad. You might want to take a minute.”

“tell me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with taking a minute. It’ll still be there.”

He actually takes your advice and sits quietly for a while. You’re grateful for the extra time to consider carefully what questions he might ask from here, and the right ways to answer them. It’s very hard going.

You get up to get some water and it turns out half the kitchen is gone, including some cupboards that just kind of...end halfway out from the wall. Various items are still lined up on their shelves, although you don’t see any dishes in the ones that usually contain them. Oh, well. You return to your former position in time to see Sans put an empty bottle back in his pocket. You don’t smell anything, so it must have just been water; when his hand reappears there’s a bottle for you, too.

“tell me,” he repeats eventually.

“The-” not _brother_ ; only Papyrus is brother now, “-person who abused you only found out about what your body does because he’d _already been abusing you_ for years, because he was… bad, _terrible_. He did it because he wanted to. He _knew it was wrong_ , and he hid it from everyone. He did it on purpose. I got the impression that he was supposed to...give you access to some kind of community? People who ‘make siblings’. Because of what you can do-”

You realize you’re using similar terms to those Gaster had used. It makes you cringe and interrupt yourself. He’d always spoken as if Sans’s (apparently) unusual body was something between an achievement and an inanimate curiosity; his interest in it went above and beyond fetishizing.

“Because of how your body is,” you try instead, and that’s a little better. “you should have been a part of...something. It wasn’t clear, just like I don’t know how you were...born, or what...”

You still don’t know what it means to be “joined to those who make siblings”, but that’s what Gaster had said he “should” have done with Sans. It seems that brothers come from a place where siblings can be requested, and eventually they are born (Sans had been, at least), but you don’t know necessarily why or how.

“But instead of doing that he hid you, he hid what he did to you, and made sure you were isolated, afraid, and ignorant so he could continue abusing you. I think that’s partly why I can’t answer as much as I hoped. It might even be part of why he left wherever he was from.”

You purse your lips, and hope he’s satisfied. He’s not.

“what did he use it for?” he whispers.

“He was using it to fuel machines he built, but he didn’t actually need to.”

You have no clue if the Sans you’d seen through Papyrus had believed it was necessary or not, but that doesn’t matter. Papyrus hadn’t cared for the same reason you don’t: _nothing_ could justify the kind of things you’d seen. You really hope Sans’s knowledge will fill in the gaps, help him believe it. It works.

“what happened to him?” he asks instead.

“He made a fatal miscalculation,” you assert calmly, having already established his earlier mathematical error, “and then he fell into the Core. That’s what fuels it, and you...did the math that designed it, you basically built it. That’s why you know how it works.”

He’s satisfied with that too, but he stays quiet for a long, long time. He’s still not done.

“humans don’t make me get...” he gestures at his lap, “do they. it’s...supposed to be there.” Oh. He means his genitalia.

“It’s a normal biological function for you,” you reply simply. “I’m pretty sure that’s just how skeletons are.” They’re not like other people’s, but like he said to you once...they’re all different. He sits quietly with that for a bit, then gets still.

“did that stuff happen to paps, too?” he rasps, and his sockets overflow as he stares dully at nothing.

“No,” you reply quickly, after ascertaining that he’s definitely referring specifically to what had happened to _him_. It’s best if you can stick as close to the truth as possible, since he can likely tell from your face if you don’t. He doesn’t need to know that Papyrus had been forced to watch, or that it had been his little brother’s intervention had made them able to save each other, even though he was still more or less a baby. He doesn’t need to know that the tipping point had been Gaster revealing the role he intended Papyrus to have in the abuse once he became physically capable of certain acts. That had been his fatal miscalculation.

Gaster’s brothers had been helpless against him individually, but Papyrus had used his integrity, the wholeness of his being, to tap into knowledge and abilities he didn’t have yet. He’d somehow been able to show his brother how to use skills _he_ didn’t have yet either, making a judgement and administering justice. Doing that had made them both able to survive, and to stop the abuse permanently.

“does papyrus know what happened to me?” he sobs quietly. “he’s gotta know, if h-he was able to-”

“ _No_ ,” you answer emphatically. “He _doesn’t know_.” You squeeze his fingers, and their shaking relents slowly. “He doesn’t remember, okay? It worked the way it was supposed to. Nobody knows but me.”

He looks relieved, then covers his face with his hands with a flicker of shame.

“sorry you have to know,” he sobs quietly after a little bit. “ _sorry_. m’sorry.”

“Hey,” you say gently, and wait for him to look at you. He does. Eventually.

“If it was me, would you do it?”

His teeth part slightly as he looks down, then back up at you. “yeah,” he exhales slowly, regret draining out of his features. “yeah, i would.” His eye lights are steady as he nods solemnly, and his thumbs rasp through the grooves under his sockets, clearing them perfunctorily.

Just when you think it’s done, he asks the question you prayed he wouldn’t.

“why’m i so scared to feel good?” he rasps, face harder than bone. “why do i wanna hurt myself, try and get other people to hurt me?”

You know exactly what he means, and you put your hands over your face and weep, finally at your limit.

Sans waits a long time until you’ve finally calmed down, takes a different bottle out of his phone for you this time. It helps. He’s asking, and he has the right to decide to know this about himself. You still hide your eyes for a long moment before you start to tell him.

“He started when you were too young to even understand the difference between yourself and someone else. All you knew was that it felt good, but you didn’t know why it happened or what it even was. How could you? It was just... something that happened.”

Sans leans over and holds himself, gets unnaturally still.

“When you got old enough to start feeling uncomfortable with what he did, he started hurting you in a way that... somehow, he made it so being hurt felt good to you. Because if you didn’t...feel a certain way, it wouldn’t be possible to do what he did to you. He couldn’t force you to...feel that way, but he _could_ hurt you. So by connecting those… hurting you that way made it so you couldn’t stop him from doing what he wanted anymore.”

You wince, tears squeezing out of your eyes as your hear him make the same retching noise he had when he’d first seen what his body had made.

He knows what he was forced to feel, and he knows what he couldn’t stop.

Sans curls in on himself, then turns to sit facing the back of the couch and pulls his hood up.

“glad paps made me forget that,” he rasps so quietly that without speaking from his soul you’d never have been able to make it out. He makes the retching noise again, a little softer. “makes me feel like i never want anyone to see me again, and i don’t even….”

He trails off.

“i... _do_ feel it,” he shudders out, slow and horrified.“always felt it. jus’ can’t remember cause it’s in the place where there isn’t anything, like he always tried to tell me….”

He weeps quietly for a while; you don’t know who he means. You know better than to try to touch him. You stay quiet; not pushy, just _present_.

“always had a place where there’s nothing,” he whispers eventually. “i knew it, even when...i didn’t know. so i guess when other stuff happened to me... when i got upset and hurt, felt like i was _bad_ , i jus’...”

He takes a deep breath, shakes it out.

“did my best to put _something_ in there. as close as i could to what happened, cause i felt like that’s what i deserved for what i did.” He means the two years he spent finding people to hurt him.

“You know you didn’t deserve that, Sans.” You know it, you remember because you felt it in him. He knows.

“don’t feel like it right now,” he whispers. “guess i gotta take your word for it til i can believe it again, right?”

“Sounds like a plan, Stan.”

You wipe away a few tears before they finish drying; Sans hunches and shakes a little more.

“figured it had to be something like this… why i’m gross inside,” he drones eventually, voice drowning in humiliation and shame. “he made me like it, messed me up. bet i do all kinds of sick shit jus’ like what you saw.”

“Hey,” you say quietly. “I know you. There's nothing wrong with what you like, or what you don’t like.” He just shivers.

“Hey.”

He bends his skull down, pushing his forehead into the cushion for a long moment before he finally rolls his head to the side, looks at you. His eye lights are dim and small.

“You don’t do anything sick or gross. There’s nothing wrong with how you are, okay?” There’s a reason for everything he does, and his experiences have shaped how he is the same way they do for anyone, regardless of being able to remember them. None of those ways of being or the reasons for them make him gross or bad. He’s not responsible for what was done to him.

He stares at you in dull horror. “dunno how you can say that.” It’s a flat whisper. “this is why i did that to you, isn’t it? when my h-hand slipped. i made you do it like that, cause that’s how it happened to _me_.”

The points in his sockets fade to nonexistence, and he hides himself again. You feel the wave of not-cold.

“Sans, you were _there_ ,” you point out desperately. “You _know_ that’s not how it happened. It was an accident, not anyone’s fault.”

You frown and sigh when there’s no response, then touch your pocket.

“ _don’t_ ,” he whimpers miserably. “he’s been through enough already, okay? jus’… don’t.”

“Why don’t we go to Grillby’s?” you try, starting to feel a little desperate. He turns just enough so you can see a sliver of his face under the hood. A few more tears slide out of his socket, then he just sort of slumps sideways with a little sob, flops down facing the back of the couch. But he wiggles up after a minute, keeps going until he can press the top of his hood-shrouded skull against you with another tiny noise.

“yeah, okay,” he sobs quietly. “okay.” he just stays there, and you hesitantly place your hand on his head. He shivers a little, and that’s usually a good sign.

“in… in a lil bit. okay. m’gonna wait for frisk ta leave.”

Your exhale as quietly as you can, press his head the way he likes. Subtly pull your phone out and send a message.

“Okay.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To disambiguate: ‘Osteomyelitis’ is an infection in the bone that can sometimes have no symptoms. It is very difficult to treat and can cause bone death, arthritis, and impaired growth/permanent short stature.   
> “Myelitis” is an infection in the spinal cord which has damaging neurological effects including depression, chronic pain, fatigue, and sexual dysfunction. Both are more common in people with chronic conditions.  
> My use of these terms in meant to be evocative rather than literal, and are allegories in turn for the abuse itself and its effects much later. However, Sans and Papyrus have an equivalent of mild brain damage from what he did to make them forget; that is why Sans needs to sleep and why Papyrus sort of forgets what he’s doing or saying in the middle of it sometimes. Sans cannot do what Papyrus did, but it is why he puts his hands in his eyes, even though he doesn’t know why. The rest of Sans’s condition has existed since birth.
> 
> Basically what I’m doing here is using magic shit to explain/evoke the very real psychological and physical effects of complex post traumatic stress disorder.   
> The space where there’s ‘nothing’ is the sore spot the title of this fic’s referring to.   
> The fact that we must deal with it at some point is the inevitable sensitivity to pain the title of this fic’s referring to.  
> The ways we help each other recover from the cause and creation of that space is the specific type of kindness the title of this fic’s referring to.


	44. a warm place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nine Inch Nails – A Warm Place  
> https://youtu.be/MN6sfJ1qFQg?t=3

Grillby sets a glass of something you recognize in front of you, and another glass of something you don’t.

You only see it in your peripheral vision, because you’ve been staring at the tablecloth over Lola’s booth for longer than you can remember at this point.

… _Humans will die if they do not sleep_ , he crackles adamantly. _… I have a bed you will be able to use. It is clean and safe._

“Wh-” Your voice rattles shut; you’re not sure how long it’s been since you’ve spoken. Grillby probably has a point. “What are these?”

You don’t look away but you can see him indicate the larger. It’s Sans’s favorite, the lightly greenish citrus-pine. You’ve never had it yourself.

… _I cannot always explain it well, but this will help. This feeling will stop, and you will supply something else for yourself. I do not know what it will be; it will be **your** emotion. Just a slightly different one._

He indicates the smaller glass, containing a slightly opaque pale yellow that manages to somehow appear wholesome. It’s kind of impressive.

… _This will remind you that you did what was necessary._

“You don’t know that,” you rasp.

… _I don’t need to know anything_ , he points out reasonably enough. _… Only you know what you did._

“And Sans,” you add wryly.

… _Yes. However, I have met you, and this will help you. There are...many people who it would not help, and some who it would harm. I have been doing this for more time than can be counted, and I know this to be the case._

You drink the first glass.

“This is you, isn’t it?”

… _Yes._

The grief moves into your chest, gets heavy and sore. Moves out of your throat where it’s trying to strangle you. It’s progress, and you can’t begrudge it. You can almost appreciate it.

You look up at Grillby, who’s still standing beside the table and watching you carefully. You look at the smaller glass, drink it.

You stare at the empty booth seat across from you. Sans will survive this, and so will you. Now you know what each brother sacrificed for the other, and what burdens they carry for each other.

Now you carry a burden for both of them.

Tears run down your face; a part of you is grateful they trust you enough to allow you to, because this is far too much for any one person to bear. Sans is able to know without remembering, and he’s doing his best to bear it. Papyrus remembers without knowing; he’s taken on this burden and a little more, too. Even now Lola is putting her shoulder under it; given time, it will be redistributed until there’s less chance someone will buckle under its crushing weight.

Your eyes wander from the tablecloth-covered booth and find the bar. Alphys smiles gently at you. She's up to the task.

You look up at Grillby, who flickers encouragingly. He’s ready to take his share.

This is what monsters do. Share everything: good, bad, and neither. Pass it around so everyone always gets enough, so no one ever gets too much.

You nod at Grillby, and follow him to the back.

***

 

So! If you care about that sort of thing and/or need an angst break, I did some silly little drawings of how I see these characters here: <https://www.deviantart.com/gildedpleasure/gallery/>

 

If there's any scene or character in particular you'd like to see, let me know and I might be able to do it although I can't promise anything. It's just for funsies. That being said, if you have your own ideas about how they look then that’s how they look. <3

I'm glad this particular revelation's over with so we can deal with it and maybe even figure out what to do about it, if anything. Relationships will grow and change, a few more surprising things will happen, and hopefully you won't be too mad at me (although it's also okay if you are ;) ). When it's all said and done I think this is going to end up being about 60-65 chapters but don't quote me on that.

This is the second to last arc of my weird long sci fi romance, so I wanted to thank you all again for sticking with me, for so much wonderful feedback, and all your lovely comments. It's just been a really amazing experience for me during a very shitty time, and that's priceless.


	45. banana who

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [INXS – Never Tear Us Apart](https://youtu.be/yyZU4iNRdsM)

You’ve been up for a little while, but you just lie there and keep staring at Grillby’s ceiling because although you’re not asleep anymore, you’re still experiencing parts of the past summer, almost all of which are preferable to what you’re feeling and experiencing right now. Certainly better than some of the things you’ve recently felt and experienced, that’s for fucking sure.

Right now Sans is picking up Nattie quick and sure despite them being too big for it, setting them on his hip and trundling over to the grill to tend to his dogs. Just like he’d picked up Papyrus so many times, taking him everywhere, talking to him and feeding him, telling bad jokes and making up anecdotes, speaking ceaselessly to reassure them both that they’re safe, they’re okay now. Even if they didn’t know what they were safe from. Even if they were not-okay sometimes, or okay in some ways but not others.

You see Papyrus’s iridescent tears in the sunlight, too….tears of nostalgia and fondness. He thought he was remembering Sans holding MK, or at least that’s what he told himself. And it’s fine either way; now that you know him better, you see the softness in his face as he watches his brother take care of a child, making them laugh, teasing them out of their defensiveness after an experience that had made them feel like not-a-person.

You sob dryly but no tears come; there’s a kind of grace in seeing someone hurt as badly as Sans had been still being so full of nurturing and kindness it looks for any opportunity to spill over, even if it’s in unexpected and sometimes convoluted ways. Even if it’s couched in pranks and jokes, lies and evasions. He can be a little mean sometimes, and he loses his temper once in a while. He drinks too much, he makes unnecessary difficulties, he’s bad at communicating sometimes, and he’s habitually stubborn and secretive. He’s not perfect, but he’s trying his best. Especially when it comes to making it work with you. You’re far from perfect yourself, and you’re just as interested in being with him as the other way around. But you don’t know what to do with _this_ , and you’re not… You shiver and sob, but nothing else comes out.

Yeah… you’re not doing so well, are you.

Under usual circumstances it’d be enough to get you to go see a mental health counselor or something. But there’s really no practical way to explain how much of an impact this is having on you without also convincing them you’d seen a child being abused now, rather than a timelessly long time ago that might have been...what, thousand of years ago by your reckoning? The only way to avoid that would be to lie so much, or use such vague terms no genuine progress could be made.

It’s a lonely feeling.

Then the door pushes open and a very rumpled Sans shuffles in slowly, rubbing a socket. He looks at you as he approaches, then just stands there at the side of the bed until you lift an arm, incline your head. He makes a quiet sound like he wasn’t entirely sure of his welcome, and it feels like your soul might crack in half as he kneels heavily on the bed, wiggles in under the covers with you.

You encourage him to cuddle up to you, lay his skull on your shoulder; you feel relieved when he does. You’re grateful that he spent however long under the table with Lola; you have good reason to believe that he can hold and be held with her no matter how gross he feels, no matter how bad it gets. You rub his humerus under the padding of sweatshirt, the barely-there resistance of his soft magic you can feel a little under his clothes sometimes against your side.

He’s not crying. It might be better if he was.

You both think quietly for a long time, considering how truly unprepared you both were for this kind of...thing...to enter your relationship, fuming between you like a rotting corpse in bed with you. You should have known, or at least suspected the _type_ of bad it was going to be. You know him, and he knows himself. Now there’s this on top of the terrifying experience you’d had when his body had made what it did. He feels what you know, and you know what he doesn’t remember.

After a bit, both of you find your fingers creeping towards each other’s chests, knowing what you’ll find there but too curious and trusting not to check on each other.

Only protective quiet, stillness wrapped up snug.

“I guess there are some things even magic sex can’t fix, huh?” you say gently after his fingers have found yours, started playing together they way you do when you’re both resting, thinking, trying to find calm and balance. He huffs softly, acknowledging.

He’d meant it when he said what you’d told him made him feel like he never wants anyone to see him again, and you can feel a blanket drawn over yourself, protective and reluctant. You don’t know what he thinks you feel about what you’d seen, and to be fair you don’t know what to feel either. Other than the pain, fear, and horror of empathy.

“I still love you,” you add after a bit, since you don’t know if he knows that. “I told you I would, and I do.”

“me too,” he grunts quietly. “and, uh.” His voice peters out to a whisper. “guess i believe you, too. didn’t expect that.”

“I’m glad,” you reply, then shift a little to look at him. He lifts his skull and you turn toward each other, curving in like commas. The way his body feels right now reminds you of the week of grief, neutral bones resonating with shared pain and comfort. You make the space between yourselves to let it pool there, and it still works the way it did before. Before you’d ever seen each other’s souls or touched each other’s bodies with the intent to pleasure. You remember the press of his forehead to yours; you have context for the kind of intimacy it signifies for him, now. Not sexual, just very affectionate. That’s when you’d started playing with each other’s fingers this way, too. Touching to find balance in yourselves and between you, even when it’s hard. Even when it’s not comfortable, and sometimes when it hurts.

“Don’t you get tired of this?” you hiss out without meaning to. Fuck.

“course i do,” he rasps harshly. “’m sick an tired a being sick n tired, jus’ like you.” He takes a deep breath, pushes it out. “but i got more reasons to keep at it than i used to, and _so do you_.” He huffs a little while you just stare at your fingers, still working, still touching. Maintaining contact through conflict.

“There’s no trick to it,” you whisper. “You just do it.”

“pretty much, yeah,” he agrees hollowly. “owe it to yourself, y’know? gotta keep at it so there’s something left when you get back.”

He holds you while you finally manage to cry.

It helps.

He pulls a square of cloth-paper out of his pocket after a bit, and you use it to wipe your face, blow your nose. You’re relieved that something came out this time. It’s progress. You have to actually feel your feelings in order to move through them, but once again you become aware of the weight. It’s still too heavy.

“you don’t have anyone to talk to bout it?”

Huh. You’d thought he’d fallen asleep, but his sockets are just shut. He opens them, looks at you softly for a long time. It’s true; you don’t. You can’t talk to him about it any more than you have without causing harm (at least for now), Papyrus and Frisk are out of the questions, and...yeah, not really. Not any monsters, at least. But maybe…

“you worried i’ll have a problem with that?” He asks softly.

You nod.

“i, uh.” He’s struggling to say this. “you _gotta_ , okay? gotta talk to someone. but….” Oh. _This_ is the hard part for him to say. “make sure they don’t...say anything to _me_ , k?”

Ohhhh.

You nod emphatically, and he relaxes a little. Not much, but you still notice.

“’m gonna stay over here a little while, but you… don’t need to. seems like it’s not too good for you right now.”

You don’t say anything and he shifts heavily. “can’t sleep. gotta wait for paps ta come back.”

“Oh.” You squeeze his phalanges lightly, look into his sockets. The points inside are dim but steady. “Are you going to be okay until then, though?”

He shrugs. “yeah, how _you_ mean. for real, not particularly. but ’m not gonna lose it or anything. it’s… might be hard to believe, but i think it’s… better? or… it will be. at some point. ‘cause i got something to put there now, but i don’t hafta remember it.” He glances at your face, shudders. “’s a good thing i don’t. can tell ya that much. but nothin’s ever _stayed_ in there before. this...hurts, but it’s something.” He glances down, shakes his head. “i know it doesn’t make any-”

“It does,” you interrupt in a hoarse whisper. “It makes sense to me.”

“m’sorry,” he replies likewise. “wish it didn’t.”

“There’s still The Thing,” you point out to get the unpleasantnesses over with all at once. His face gets heavy with sorrow.

“this helped, but it still…” his grin flattens in chagrin. “that was me,” he whispers. “i made it like that, even if i didn’t do it on… on purpose. even if i know why, doesn’t make me less scared.” His face crumples as much as it can, then blends out to sadness again. “that thing you always say when i’m not sure bout something. ‘if we don’t like it we’ll stop.’ but...we _didn’t_ like it, and we _couldn’t stop_. an it’s my fault we couldn’t.”

“Sans, it _wasn’t_ your fault,” you insist, but he shakes his head sadly.

“’m not okay with it,” he replies after a little while, glances up at you. “you’re not either.”

You decide not to argue about it, since he’s not right, but he’s not wrong, either. He just needs time, and probably to sleep like he said. Has to think soft on it, and he can’t yet.

“nothin bad’s gonna happen to me here, and you gotta take care of yourself, okay? want me to take you to your place? spend some time with the kiddos, that always helps you.”

Your face goes weird, you feel it. You’re crying again. Oops.

“c’mere,” he whispers, and you move towards each other, letting the shared pain slosh out and away from between you as you tangle your limbs together: hard and cool, soft and hot. Your weeping softens as you take what he has to offer you right now: the comfort of smooth bone and quiet-soft resonance, the dampening effect of loving and being loved despite everything. He relaxes even more as he takes what you have for him: warmth, breath, heartbeat, pulse, the perceivable rhythms of your biology soothingly regular. Reliable and safe, despite everything.

Tiny distal phalanges push through your hair to massage your scalp a little; you shiver and sigh.

“you sound like me,” Sans whispers, sets his skull against you. “love you.”

“Love you too.”

***

Ange and you watch some garbage edutainment program on your viewer in your bed, enjoying the quiet of the kids’ first week at Toriel’s school. They seem pretty into it; their insistence on being in the same class wasn’t anywhere near the nightmare of broken protocols it would be anywhere that isn’t Ebott. Shonda’s going through a whole thing with needing to protect Nattie, and Nattie’s going through their whole thing with what happened...and both are dealing with way too much change at once.

You can relate.

“You need a refill?” you ask your sister, since you figure you’ll have to get up soon, might as well be now.

Angie’s got her near-empty tanker mug of coffee next to the bed on the nightstand; you’re enjoying the lazy midmorning after your half-day at work. You’re a little wobbly, but somewhat functional. It’s a relief to be able to have things you can do something about, if you’re honest. People you can help. Sans really does give good advice to the people he cares about; you’re probably going to take the rest of it too, although you’re not particularly looking forward to it. At all.

“Free refills? Wow. You’re already a better husband than Matt,” she deadpans, and it surprises a guffaw out of you that jerks you up out of your dark thoughts. Ange is fucking _funny_ ; always has been and you’ve missed her sense of humor. It’s like she thought she wasn’t allowed to have that and a husband and kids at the same time. Bed in the middle of the day is just another thing she thought she wasn’t allowed to do anymore; hopefully she’s realizing a grown ass adult can do whatever the fuck she wants to do with her time. It seems to you like she is, and you don’t mention it since you don’t want to make her self conscious about it.

She sighs and relaxes, glances at her empty cup. “I’m good. Especially good since he finally learned to take a fucking hint, and just message me if he needs to like a normal person instead of driving his car on the curb and starting streetfights. Remind me to thank Sans again the next time he’s over.” She’s grinning now, and you let your shoulders shake out the last of your relieved mirth with a sigh.

“It might be a minute,” you admit, figuring you might as well take the opening. “He’s kind of dealing with something right now, him and his brother. Family stuff.”

“Is everyone okay?” she asks, concerned. “No one-”

“No, no,” you wave your hand, “nothing like that.” No one’s dead. “It’s kind of just them two, and...me, I guess.”

“You’re...involved?” She looks really confused, and you can’t blame her.

“I know it’s hard for you to believe that some of my experiences… are real,” you say after a minute of frowning in thought. “But do you think you can...listen to me anyways, even if you don’t understand?”

Her face does something strange, like what you said made her realize something. Well, whatever it was, you hope it was a good thing.

“Yeah, Goob. I’m always here to listen. Help too, if I can.”

You nod, flick your fingers to turn off the sound on your viewer. “Sans knows I’m talking to you about this, okay? But he….doesn’t want you to say anything to him about it. Papyrus either. And when you hear it, you’ll probably know why. “

She looks perturbed, but cautiously nods back.

“Sans and Papyrus don’t remember their childhood. They also didn’t know what they are, or...where they come from. Still don’t, really.”

“I thought they were just...monsters?”

“They _are_ monsters,” you assure her readily enough. She doesn’t need to know about the...other implications. At least not yet. “Turns out the reason they don’t remember’s because they were… abused, really badly. And the reason they know that now, is because…”

You frown, backtrack a bit.

“Sans has a medical condition, but it’s not degenerative or anything. It’s a congenital thing. But he didn’t know that until recently. He had an...episode, and really needed to know what happened. Why it happened.”

“Oh, whoa,” Ange sighs, tries to sip her empty coffee absently, then replaces it with a frown. “Yeah, I guess he would have to at least try and find out what it is, right? Like...some people who are adopted, and don’t know their family medical history.” Her eyebrows knit. “Is that why he and Papyrus look so different?”

“Sort of.” You take a deep breath, glance at her. “But… they knew that trying to remember or find out themselves was a bad idea. For their, um. Mental health.” Looks like she gets that. Good. “So… I offered to find out, and tell Sans what he needed to know. But...”

She frowns. “How would you be able to do that?”

You chew your lips.

“Hmm. Let’s say it was like a...recording, and I had to watch all of it to find out what I needed to know.”

Her face twists in dismay. “You had to watch kids getting abused?” she whispers in horror. “Wh-”

“Sans was sexually abused,” you interrupt in a hoarse whisper, hugging your arms around your sick stomach. “It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and I can’t-I’m not dealing with it very well.”

Her hands come up to cover her mouth and nose. “Oh my god,” she whispers into them. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry… god, you can’t-, but he seems….”

You shake your head.

“He’s _not_ okay. I mean...he _is_ , and he’s not at the same time. And he never was, okay? Even though he can’t remember.”

“Papyrus too?” she whispers into her hands, and you can’t deal. You start crying again; it’s progress still, but fuck. It hurts.

“Shit,” she whispers softly, hands coming away from her face to reach out, hug you tight. “ _Shit_ ,” she repeats softly.

“Yeah,” you sob in agreement.

“Is that why he’s not staying over?” she inquires sadly.

“No,” you sob, “that’s just mostly why we’re not having _sex_. And b-because-” you spasm, and your breath hitches uncontrollably like a toddler’s. “Because we had a bad time the last time we tried, because….of his condition, and what happened. Finding out w-why it happened like that, and h-he...”

“Hey,” she whispers, stroking your back. “It’s okay.”

“It’s really not,” you point out reasonably enough, “because something happened _we couldn’t stop_ , and he thinks it’s his fault,” you hiccup weakly. “He thinks he made me d-do something I didn’t want to do.”

“Oh _shit_ ,” Ange hisses sympathetically. “But it wasn’t like that?”

You shake your head fervently, wordlessly weeping for a second. “He just _slipped_ , and… his h-hand slipped. He’d never even done that before, and neither had I. We didn’t know what was happening til it was over, and he g-got sick from it.”

“ _Shit_ ,” she repeats into your hair, rubs your back.

“Yeah,” you sob, “ _Everything’s_ shit.”

Ange soothes you until you’re done crying for now, then goes to refill her tanker while you finally go take a leak. When you reconvene in bed, she’s brought the entire container of frozen confection you like, and a utensil to eat it with. It’s made from a bunch of different stuff, but mostly coconut, you think. At least there’s still plenty of those.

Her solicitude makes you cry again, but in a better way this time. So you cry and shovel cold sweetness in your face, and push the container against your eyes to cool them down, rip out a few eyebrow hairs that adhere for your trouble. It makes you laugh, then cry some more.

“Why don’t you come with me to work?” she asks later. “See the kids, just sort of...hang out?”

You think about that. It might do you some good to see children being safe and protected, just...being children like they should be allowed to do. It’s something Sans advised too, now that you think on it.

“Yeah,” you agree with an amiable nod. “I think I will.”

She grins, starts to get up. You pat her arm, and she pauses.

“You’re a better husband than Matt, too.”

She laughs, but when you look at her eyes you can tell she knows what you mean.

You go to the school, help watch the kids who need to be watched while their caretakers take care of other things. You can make sure they’re safe and protected, make sure they can be kids, have their fun and their fights, be silly or serious as their natures direct. Learn and share, figure stuff out.

It helps.

You get a text from Sans; he wants you to come over when you get a chance. Papyrus has been back a few days, he’s feeling a little better now.

It makes you smile.

***

Sans cuddles into you while you watch Frisk and MK play a projected game. It’s a remake of a remake of a remake; something to do with making holes in things and going through the holes to solve puzzles. Both Sans and Papyrus find it fascinating, but don’t play. They just like to watch.

“can you make the matrices work with your fingers?” You ask Sans idly.

“mmmhmm.”

“You don’t want to?”

“nope. jus’ like watching.”

Papyrus comes home eventually, makes spaghetti. Frisk and MK eat quickly, go back to Endogeny’s after. Sans picks at it, sees you looking, and eats a little more before he gives up. He looks sad, but not in a not-okay way.

He looks not-okay in other ways.

He and Papyrus talk silently for a bit at the table after dinner, and you go to bed early. They’re asleep and holding each other when you wake up for work, and it seems like it’s helping.

You look down, thinking about the time you’d seen Papyrus swing his brother up onto his hip, carry him around still sleeping and just sort of...performing tasks, monologuing at him while he was unconscious. He talks to him when he’s not there, too; you’ve seen it happen and now you know why. Sans can understand what Papyrus says no matter where he is, because he’s always listening.

He’s right. There’s no trick to this, just you sort of...do it. Keep on and do the best you can, make the best decisions for yourself you can manage.

The next day, Sans spends the night back at your place.

He stays for 18 days straight, and sleeps in your bed every night.

But.

***

“To be clear, I like that you’re here with me. But I wanted to ask you...you spend every night with me now,” you say softly. “Is there a particular reason why?”

He sighs heavily, and a crease appears between his sockets.

“guess it’s cause i need to sleep… an you do too. sorta….reminds me to do it? like it’s a habit.”

Oh. A lot of monsters don’t need sleep at all, do they. You smile, exhale in soft amusement. “Yeah. You could say I’ve got a pretty intense sleeping habit.”

He looks amused too. “it helps. never, uh. never had someone to do that with before. not like...we do. s’nice.”

“I can’t argue with that,” you sigh, don’t press. Not yet, anyhow.

You turn off the light and he cuddles right into you like usual. You pet his skull, rub the inside of your wrist on his back while he starts shaking. He tries to control his breathing; he can’t. You feel the slow agitation in his magic, and he starts to sob.

There’s still some of the bonfire on the beach you haven’t been to yet. It’s after Sans left, and the night breeze is cool on your back while the fire heats your face enough that you rub at it, make sure you’re not burning. The water smells so much cleaner than it used to, refreshing high tide instead of rotten fish. It almost makes you understand why people ever made perfumes that were supposed to smell like the ocean in the first place. You turn to Frisk with a smile, lifting a hand to gain their attention.

“Have you never had human alcohol before?” you ask when you see the look on their face.

They set the can down in the sand with a grimace.

“It tastes like shit,” they blurt, appalled. They scowl down at it seeming offended by its very existence, which is extremely funny to you as you sip your half a beer with nostalgia and extreme moderation. “Who even _drinks_ this??”

“Almost everyone,” you admit wryly. “And no, I don’t know why,” you add, taking another sip.

Sans lets out a freshet of sobs as you feel his magic oscillate again. You hold and stroke him as comfortingly as you can; you know he’ll beg you not to if you scoot away, try to look at him. Then he’ll apologize for it. He tries to suppress his shaking, but he’s not very good at it.

You take a breath.

“m’sorry,” he whispers shamefully before you can say anything.

Again.

“What is it, Sans? What’s wrong? I wish you would talk to me.”

“’m jus’ dealing with a lot right now,” he lies. Again. He sobs, barely audible. His shoulders rock with grief, and you feel his resonance again.

“’ _m sorry_ ,” he hisses, manages to suppress that awful retching sound, but not enough that you don’t know what it was going to be. He comes back to the fire with a bemused, wondering look on his face, sits down next to you and steals your drink with his clever fingers before you even notice it’s gone. He grins, sets the beer to his teeth and pours the rest of it through his mandible to make you laugh so hard you have to go pee in the ocean.

He curls up into you as small as he can, unable to let go or get closer, unable to say what he needs to say. He’s stuck. He cries until he falls asleep, takes you with him.


	46. pants on fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bjork – Human Behavior  
> https://youtu.be/KDbPYoaAiyc  
> ^ imho the best music video of all time

sans: knock knock

You: who’s there

sans: banana

You: banana who

sans: knock knock

You: who’s there

sans: banana

You: banana who

sans: knock knock

You: who’s there

sans: banana

You: banana who

You knock on the door for dramatic effect before he manages to send another message, and when you check the message you receive a second later it says

sans: come in

so you do.

At least you’d managed to finish up your paperwork for the newest Vulkin home health cert member before just getting up from your desk and starting to walk. At least it’s not a long walk, either.

You can’t do this anymore.

So you’re not going to.

When you round the corner into the dining room, Papyrus is there with Sans, cutting shapes out of paper to slide between his teeth and making him fill out a questionnaire regarding flavor, taste, texture, overall starred rating, edginess, and mouthfeel.

You know because you already filled out yours. As did Frisk.

Papyrus sees your face.

“NOPE.”

He tosses his scissors on the table.

“PRECURSOR TO A SUDDEN EXIT,” he adds, already powerwalking out the front door.

Sans looks up at you mildly.

“heya,” he says, finishes filling out the last four checkboxes calmly before standing up. He even pushes his chair back in, then shuffles up.

“you okay?”

“Sans.”

He hunches a little, glances to the side.

“We _can’t make anything better_ if you won’t _talk to me_.”

He glances at your face and slumps, defeated.

“i wanna go see grillbz,” he whispers at the floor.

You blink, confused. “Why don’t you?”

“nah,” he whispers even more weakly, then makes an uncomfortably significant gesture that you recognize immediately.

Ummm.

“Like... when you used to go upstairs?” you say, and your own voice sounds unfamiliar and tight.

He looks utterly baffled, then frowns into your face curiously. Gets iridescent, nods slowly.

...Oh. He wants to _see_ him.

“but i know that’s not how you do it,” he adds reassuringly. “figured out you wouldn’t like it, and i’m _not gonna_. can’t help how i feel though, and you _asked_ me. you been asking.”

You sit down a little suddenly on the sofa, and he does too after a second.

“We never actually talked about that sort of thing,” you point out after staring at the floor along with him for a few minutes. “Going with other people sometimes. I guess it didn’t occur to me you might...” You frown. “Did I say something that made you think anything in particular?”

He shakes his head. “figured it out after i talked to some people that went with humans around here before. not just for- not like _i_ did before. more like you and me now, i guess. staying over, seeing each other.”

He looks sad.

“they said that you wouldn’t like it if me and grillbz were seeing and touching each other sometimes too, making each other feel good. but staying over’s okay… takin care of each other, spending time and all… said you wouldn’t have a problem with anything else, and you don’t.”

He’s sweating a little, speaking carefully. “said you’d just have a problem with the _touching_. said that it might make you feel bad, or think i didn’t like you anymore.” He looks chagrined; he glances over at you and sighs heavily. “and ya do.”

Oh.

“listened to your sister, too. didn’t ask, jus’ listened. didn’t know it was like that, wondered what i should do about it. didn’t know what else to say, cause i already _told_ you everything that goes on. and...i didn’t wanna bring it up again like it was a problem for me, make you worry i’d go around without tellin ya or something. specially after that time he hugged me and you got upset. then...”

He looks embarrassed. “he told me later on he knew some humans are like that, cause a what they say when they come in the bar sometimes. said that’s what he expected?”

You don’t know how to react to that, so you ask a question instead.

“You touched each others’ souls, right? And...bodies. For a long time?”

He shrugs, nods. “yeah, for a real long time. first time i ever did most things was with him. least, before i met you. me n you...well.”

You think about that. He’s not really talking about this like something he used to do a long time ago and wants to do again. And he’s not talking about wanting to have sex with ‘other people’ a general way, either. It’s one specific person. He’s talking about it like… oh.

Uh oh.

“When was the last time you did that with Grillby?” you ask eventually.

“bout three weeks after we first met, i guess? was pretty shook up bout that whole thing, stayed there for almost a month, i think. hadn’t been back at the house long when you showed up.”

You feel leaden in the middle. “He’s your...what do you even call it?”

Sans shrugs, shakes his head. “like...sexy talk? think i told ya all those by now.”

“Not necessarily, I mean like...words for the people you do those things with.”

He looks down like he’s trying to figure out what your question means.

“could maybe say...we shared souls? might be the closest, but usually that’s for people that made kids, or want to. not a lot of words for it, because it’s not anyone’s _business_ …” he explains slowly, sockets narrowed like he’s thinking hard. “most a the time i don’t get it, but… maybe like what you all say, ‘lovers?’ we don’t _say_ stuff like that to each other, though, and it’s not all the time. it’s not really. uh. like that with us. like i said a long time ago, remember? and when we _do_ stuff, what we do... that’s… nobody’s business.”

“But...” you frown. “Everyone talks about it. Constantly. Like who’s doing what with who, and how...”

You trail off, and your eyes get wide.

“Everyone knows,” you add after a long minute of silence. “You don’t say anything because it’s nobody’s business, but _everyone knows_ ,” you whisper, aghast. “You had a boyfriend _this whole time_ and I had no fucking idea.”

He looks very confused and even more concerned. “he’s… not a boy,” he says slowly. “and he’s more than a friend.”

“Husband?” you try breathlessly.

“we’re not married,” he says incredulously. He looks weird about that too, and you gesture curiously.

“doggo asked me once, i guess. but that was after...” he trails off, shrugs with discomfort.

You wait.

“doggo’s fat yap’s how i got that cute nickname,” he answers tightly, and your eyebrows hit your hairline. His eye lights are hard and bright, but then they loosen a bit.

“an i’m why no one believes what he says anymore,” he admits quietly. “mighta overreacted, but it is what it is: a long time ago for both of us. no hard feelings.”

He looks at the floor a long time, huffs out a sigh. “it’s that thing again. like when i thought you n me were one thing, you thought we were something else. now you think somethin’s going on you don’t know about, but you know _everything_ that’s going on. always did, told you right from the start, but...” He looks lost and confused. Sad.

“i don’t know how to tell ya stuff you already know.” He shakes his head, but it’s not at you. “don’t know how to make you _understand_. me n grillbz’s exactly what it is, nothin more or less than what i already told you, and what you see when we’re there.” He finally looks up, meets your eyes looking earnest and a little desperate. “i stayed with tori for almost four years, took care of the kid together, never saw each other. never did much of anything but cuddle.”

You try and pull coherent information out of the roiling tangle of your emotions. Wow. Monsters really _don’t_ have the same kind of expectations humans do. Like...that thing he said a long time ago...that….oh god.

“Papyrus lived there, too?”

He nods, even though he knows you know that.

“Did Papyrus… stay with Toriel?”

He nods again easily; water is wet. Apparently you still have no clue about the exact implications of that word. Unless... Sans is watching your face carefully, and gets a weird expression on his.

“paps doesn’t do that kinda thing,” he says, sounding extraordinarily uncomfortable.

“I gathered that,” you blurt out quickly, drop it. Then something else occurs to you. “Did you visit Grillby then, too?”

He nods easily. “thought me and you were gonna be like me n tori, then...well.” He smiles weakly. “all that stuff happened, and it was really good, right? didn’t change how i felt, even though it...i already felt that way,” he tries. “just made sure you knew. by the time i figured out what you meant by ‘interested in anyone else’….heh. s’not like me n him are gonna dust if we don’t get fresh with each other.” He shrugs uncomfortably. “we don’t...uh. we’ve gone a lot longer without touching than now. didn’t think it’d come up, but i guess i feel...” he sighs. “dunno. ’m real confused. don’t know what to think or how i feel, don’t know what i want and ’m scared of… ’m scared to…” he sags, defeated. “always used to go see grillbz when i felt like this. ’s why...”

He looks miserable. “don’t know what i’m even trying to _say,_ so i wasn’t _gonna_ say anything til i did. but you asked, so i’m telling you like i always do, explaining best as i can. cause i know how i been’s a…. it’s a _problem_ ,” he whispers, ashamed. He takes a deep breath, lifts his chin a little. “but this ain’t anyone’s business cept ours cause you’re my business...and i’m yours.” He looks at you with love and sincerity; he’s telling you the truth, every word.

“Yeah,” you sigh, feeling a little teary. They don’t fall, though. You’re confused too, and you don’t really...huh. You and he are on the same page emotionally, for sure. Even if you don’t understand entirely.

“I guess I understand why you’d want to see him now, though,” you say thoughtfully. “After everything that-” you cut off, because he’s shaking his head adamantly.

“reason’s cause i want to, and i miss it.”

“But...you can’t just pretend that didn’t affect you, and make you wonder-”

“look at it this way,” he tries. “line up all those reasons; what happened, all that stuff with not remembering. us talking about it after...even me n grillbz seeing each other a long time ago, wanting to see if he noticed anything then. none of em make any difference if i don’t _want_ to. s’why it’s the only reason that matters.”

“I can’t really argue with that,” you reply honestly.

You both sit quietly for some time, and you think about everything as best you can. You have to admit you’d let your own assumptions and expectations about relationships fill in a _lot_ of blanks, when you should really know better by now. Should have then too, you suppose.

Sans had said he and Grillby used to “go upstairs,” and he’d told you all about it the first time you and he had ever _gone_ to Grillby’s. You’d thought that had been a euphemism, even though...he’d never used it again, had he? And he’d _volunteered_ the information, not only about souls, but bodies. Even when it made him uncomfortable to tell you, he did anyway. Everything else he’d said had been in the present tense, specifically after you’d asked him questions about how he engages in intimacy, whether he likes his body touched. After you’d asked him if you _need to be in love_ to touch people’s souls, he’d answered you… with an explanation of his and Grillby’s relationship.

You think as hard as you can to remember what he’d said to you. As exactly as you can. You feel dizzy for a second, but…

“ _some days you just need to know someone would notice if you weren’t there anymore. might even look forward to seein’ ya. that’s not everything, but it’s still important.”_

_He pulls his sleeve back for a moment, showing you his wrist and the beginning of his arm bones. They almost seem to glow in the dim light, but really they’re just very pale._

“ _that’s not fur or scales, but at some point it’s still flammable,” he says almost delicately._

“ _I see,” you say, feeling like you’re picking up what he’s putting down._

“ _at… at some point.” he adds tightly. “after a while.” His face gets iridescent again as he stares at the wall a little fixedly._

“ _eh,” he mumbles, looking like he’s trying to figure out what to say. How much to say, maybe._

“ _but with your soul out, you can’t make that kinda mistake,” he continues, sounding disturbed. “not like human stuff, grab first and ask how it felt later. y’can’t not care.”_

You blink rapidly, looking at nothing in particular. Wow. He’d even told you that Grillby could burn him, but he doesn’t. He trusts him not to. He’d told you right after you’d danced there together, while Grillby had made dirty jokes, brought you drinks, and carefully watched you show Sans a good time. The next time you’d gone there with Frisk, Grillby had given you free food, laughed and welcomed you; he’d _thanked_ you. For making Sans dance, making him laugh. Encouraged you to keep doing so. He’d given you advice and told you to take care of him when you’d hurt him, he had made special tea and given it to _you_ to bring him.

The bar on the surface doesn’t _have_ a second floor. Just rooms in the back, so they don’t _go upstairs_ anymore to touch each other.

Sans is bad at explaining things that should be simple; the simpler they are, the worse he is at explaining them.

But holy shit, does this ever take the cake. You never asked him why he and Grillby broke up, either. You thought it might be a sore spot or something as time went on, since he never offered that information.

Turns out the reason’s because they fucking _didn’t_.

And it’s not even like you’re angry, or… You _like_ Grillby. Sure, he can be prickly and odd, but that’s part of why you like him. He’s fun, and funny, and cares about the right sort of things. He knows what’s really important, and that guides his behavior. He’s clever and wise, always there for everyone who needs him and his place. His special drinks for people who need help coping, his special environment for people who need help to just _be,_ for as short or as long as they need.

And he’s one of the most important parts of Sans’s support system. Grillby and Lola are his…

Good lord.

Your mouth falls open.

Grillby and Lola are Sans’s family.

_His other family._

You had literally sat and had a whole fucking conversation with him, _in Grillby’s_ , during a discussion of the terms of your own relationship with Sans where you’d talked with him about how they were his other family. _You’d_ told _him_ it was his other household; you’d told him they were his _family_. He’s gotten shy about it, said you weren’t wrong. That’s what he says when you’re a little more on the nose than he’d like you to be.

He’s sitting right here with you now, baffled but patient since from his perspective the only problem you have with his ongoing and fairly intense relationship with Grillby is the part where they have sex with each other once in a while. Which hasn’t _been_ a problem, since he just...stopped, once he’d understood that it might make you feel bad.

You sigh, shaking your head.

Almost every important conversation between you and Sans about your relationship have taken place right there at Grillby’s. That’s where you figured out you’d...been in one with Sans for months longer than you’d realized. You’d been IN a relationship and not realized it was happening, no wonder you hadn’t figured out he was in another one, too. Ffffuck. How did you not see this kind of thing coming?

You get dizzy again.

_“The way I feel doesn’t make sense,” you realize as you say it. You sigh, put your face between your hands and squish your cheeks. “I think I’m freaking out about this because… I’m always worried there’s something huge I’m missing, Grillby. Some massive problem, or cultural...thingie...”_

_You look up at his gently flickering face, smile at your reflection in his spectacles. You wonder if they’re prescription. “Like it’s staring me right in the face, but it’s still going to hit me like a freight train and I won’t see it until it’s too late. Did Sans ever tell you I didn’t realize we were dating until...well. Months later? Just because it wasn’t exactly what I’m used to.”_

You rub your face with your fingers for a while, realize he’s been waiting patiently for about fifteen minutes while you sit here like a fucking tree stump. So you ask another question.

“Did you ever tell him why you stopped doing that stuff with him?”

He shakes his head with an odd expression. “he doesn’t ask me.” Wow, okay.

He peers at you more closely. “i mean, he never asks me to go somewhere private with him. he waits for _me_ to ask, always did. he’s...” he thinks for a second. “he ain’t a forward person, but he understands what he needs to. and he waits to be asked.”

You blink. “So he’s just like that with everyone?”

“no? but that could be cause he doesn’t go with anyone else, jus’ me.”

That’s more surprising than it should be.

“He doesn’t do that with Lola?”

Sans looks shocked by the suggestion.

“I’m guessing that’s...inappropriate?”

He nods.

“But you can?”

Sans looks mortified. “guess she told ya bout that, huh?” He’s so iridescent his face looks almost green. “geez.”

By the time he looks back at you, your thoughts have progressed to wondering if he’d committed some kind of sexual taboo, and he shakes his skull, waves his phalanges at you. “nah, s’like… just. embarrassed bout that whole time, i guess. that was when i was...” you nod, letting him know he doesn’t have to explain anymore. Apparently it’s one of the things you’re supposed to know, but not say anything to _him_ about. Apparently there are a _lot_ of those, and you’re starting to get a much better idea why directness is a kind of bedroom talk for him. Something else kind of bothers you, though.

“So Grillby only does that with you? That doesn’t seem fair.”

“...huh?” He looks sincerely baffled.

“You can go with me and tori and whoever, but he can’t-”

“s’not about can or can’t,” he interrupts, offended. “not sure what kinda-” He interrupts himself this time, sighs out his frustration. Shuts his sockets and opens them again.

“you got a lot of ideas that seem real weird to me. guess it’s mutual, huh?” He just looks sad now, and you’re starting to think you might be getting a little closer to figuring out what the hell’s going on.

“Um. When you said the first time you did most things was with Grillby.”

He nods.

“In the context I’m used to, you saying it that way would be implying that your relationship with him is special because of that. It might even imply that you never had sex with anyone else, even though I know that isn’t true. But when you said it, you didn’t mean any of those things, did you?”

He glances away, then back. “nope.”

“Because monsters don’t have virginity.”

He looks amused, then thoughtful. “nope.”

You lean forward, narrow your eyes a little.

“Does...do handjobs count as sex?”

He gets extremely iridescent, and you feel bad but you kind of need to know.

“I kind of need to know,” you add quietly.

“we don’t call it anything. s’just fooling around, i guess.” He looks fairly discomfited.

“But showing someone your soul’s a big deal, right? And you touch each other’s bodies, even though not everyone does. It’s...it’s _sex_.”

He nods slowly, like he’s starting to see what you’re getting at. Sort of.

“But you either do it with someone or you don’t, right? It doesn’t make you...anything. Other than what you were already? Friends, married, or...whatever you and Grillby are?”

He shrugs, shakes his head.

“And it doesn’t matter if you do that with anyone you want? Even Lola?”

“...nope.”

He looks like he doesn’t entirely understand why someone would need to ask that question, but he answers it anyhow. Water is wet.

You purse your lips. “I still think he’s what we’d call your boyfriend, or...I don’t know. Significant other. Like Frisk and MK maybe.”

He looks moderate-to-severely horrified, and you sigh.

Then you realize you’re doing the same exact thing that other people do, the thing that frustrates you so fucking much. The thing that’s plagued your life and is the reason you’d moved to Ebott in the first place. The reason you’d gotten close with monsters, started this relationship, and kept going with it. When it comes down to it, you’re a bit of a hypocrite. Not that you didn’t already know that; it comes with the territory of integrity. Just like fear and bravery, or patience and recklessness.

You don’t have a box to fit this into, and you’re desperately trying to shove it in one. And it doesn’t fit, does it?

So you take a deep breath, and another.

“The reason you said the first time you’d done most things was with him… you said it because I asked you how long you’d been doing it for, right? And that’s it.”

“yep.”

Then you just….let it go. Grillby and Sans are something you don’t have a word or a concept for. And he doesn’t need a word for it, because it’s not something to be talked about, only known. By absolutely everyone.

Except you.

Because it’s the opposite of a secret: it’s something so excruciatingly obvious no one could ever possibly miss it, so no one needs to comment on it. It’s less changeable than the rain, less interesting than the heat, exactly as frequent as expected, and more reliable than how someone’s doing today.

It’s just Sans and Grillby going off somewhere to fuck each other’s brains out. Not that either of them have one.

Poor Sans. Poor Grillby, and poor you, too. Failing to realize someone you’ve been in a relationship with for at least a year and a half was already and continues to be in an uncategorizable (and until recently, sexual) one with someone you both see several times a week might be one of the most spectacular misunderstandings you’ve ever been party to in your life, but the fact remains that it’s happening, and it’s actually not as hard to deal with as some of the other shit you’ve had on your plate for the same amount of time.

You take another deep breath, sigh it out soft.

You hold your hand out towards him hesitantly, but the way he takes it isn’t hesitant. He gives your hand a squeeze, holds it firm and tight.

Sans has been having sex with Grillby regularly (although not necessarily often, you’re gathering) since he started _having_ sex, and you’re certain that getting to that point with anyone might have been a bit of an ordeal for him. You still feel like there’s some kind of significance to their relationship despite him not having words for it, but reach the tentative conclusion its importance has little to do with whether or not it’s sexual. Theirs just happens to be. Regardless, he hasn’t had sex with Grillby in almost two years because it might upset you, and he doesn’t want to upset you because he loves you. It hasn’t come up because it apparently isn’t an especially pressing concern for him, or it hadn’t been until now, and only after _you’d_ pressed _him_ considerably about it.

And it had upset you.

If nothing about his sexual relationship with Grillby had ever prevented or directly affected his formation of relationships, sexual, romantic, or otherwise with anyone else, he’d have no reason to believe it would with you.

Until...oh. Your reaction to Grillby’s hug.

He’d been confused and concerned, so he’d done what was appropriate for him according to his culture: spoken to your relatives, his own, and people with relevant experiences in his community. It’s not like he’d begun your relationship under false pretexts; he’d been incredibly forthcoming by his standards, you realize now that you know him better. You’d had no idea just how high context monster culture is at the time, and you can see how things you’d done and said had probably led him to believe you understood the nature of things... only to realize much later that by entering a relationship with you, he’d effectively agreed to end an important part of his relationship with Grillby. And once he’d realized the severity of the misunderstanding…

Your eyes fill with emotion.

He had tried to _take_ _responsibility_ for it. He’d quietly behaved how he believed you would like him to, after consulting the appropriate sources. For him, that had been the right thing to do, and the way to do right by _you_. Just like now it’s the right thing to talk directly with you about it, because it’s important, and because you’d asked. Even though it makes him uncomfortable, and it’s not easy for either of you. Because it’s the right thing to do, and he’ll do it even when it’s not easy, even when it’s actually _really scary_ and there’s a lot at stake for him.

You turn to look at him and a tear runs down your face.

He thinks you might not like him anymore, might not love him anymore after what he’s said. But he’d answered honestly, because you’d asked him and because it’s important.

“I love you,” you say sincerely. “None of this changes _that_ , okay?” He rasps a tear out of the groove under his socket with a thumb, looks away to nod fervently. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t look at you, but he nods again even more fervently after a minute. He gets quiet when he’s going through something intense. Just like he gets talkative when he’s comfortable, gets loud when he’s happy… and now you have a better idea of why. Abused children often survive by becoming silent; invisible. You play with each other’s fingers and think quiet thoughts together; feel love, feel caring. Feel the beginnings of understanding, even when it’s hard.

He’s afraid to have sex with you because he’s worried he can make you do things you don’t want to do, that he’ll do something to frighten or disgust you. To you, or to himself. And you have a very visceral idea of why he might feel that way, and why he might not entirely trust that a good time you seem to be having is genuine.

That might be another reason he’s afraid; you know exactly what happened to him, even though he doesn’t. Neither of you had had any way to know what sort of things you’d discover through your offer to find out what he couldn’t remember, but now you both have to live with the consequences. He doesn’t have the same concern with Grillby, and it might have something to do with how long they’ve been doing that, or maybe just the fact that Grillby could burn him to a crisp in an instant if he felt threatened. Not that you couldn’t hurt him if you wanted to quite easily (don’t think about it), but there are also other ways you can hurt him… that aren’t physical.

You’ve seen Sans and Grillby together, seen how they are. There’s no doubt they care about each other a lot, probably love each other, but...they’re not _in love_. That’s doesn't mean they’re not close, or that their relationship isn’t important… maybe even crucial. For both of them. It’s just different, and that might _make_ a difference. You and Sans have to be careful with each other because you’re very different, and because you have a lot of the same issues. You’re careful because the feelings you have are important, make you both very vulnerable, and are worth nurturing and protecting the way you do.

Neither of you know how to be careful enough for this.

After what happened between you when his hand had slipped, you see why he might need a less fraught way to find his path back to being okay with… being with you that way, on top of the way you feel about each other. With being sexual at all, maybe. What had happened to him...he’d been violated in ways that should have been impossible by the very nature of those acts, but they’d been twisted beyond recognition by a sadistic asshole who can’t hurt anyone anymore. You’ve felt how he gets when he ‘doesn’t feel right’, as much as he could bear to let you. He doesn’t want you to know him like that, and he’s entitled to feel that way. You have very intimate knowledge of just how often his own body feels like something that’s happening to him; you’ve noticed how he doesn’t like you touching his soul when he’s also got genitalia. Doesn’t look at it, doesn’t even _acknowledge_ it most of the time.

And when you think about why, it makes you feel sick to your stomach. That’s something _you’re_ going to have to figure out a way to deal with before you can do anything with him, either. If either of you felt like that when you...good lord. You don’t even want to think about it.

What a mess.

Nevertheless, the fact that Sans is alive, that he survived to love and be loved, that he can even manage share himself that way at all, even if it took millennia to get there...it’s kind of a miracle, isn’t it? Maybe that’s why it feels like a miracle when he shares himself with you. It always _felt_ like that, even before you knew for a fact that it is.

There’s nothing more precious than love borne of trust. He was right when he said he the only reason that matters is whether or not he wants to, but maybe not the way he thought. The fact that he wants to share himself at all is a gift, and you think he deserves as much love as he can bear to receive, from whoever he can manage to trust enough to give it to him.

“You should go,” you say after a little while, even though he hasn’t actually asked for advice, or acted like he needs permission. All he’s done is answered your questions about his thoughts and feelings honestly, to the best of his ability.

He glances over at you, more confusion blending out into fondness and relief.

“nah,” he says eventually. “don’t think i will.” He squeezes your hand with a faint smile. “we can talk about this stuff again later, though.”

You look into his eyes, watch them subtly change texture as his thoughts get complex. What he’s gone through is significant, but how you feel and what you think is just as important. What you need to feel happy and loved is just as important as what he needs.

You’re also much more emotionally reactive in all directions, positive and negative because of...well, everything.

He’s right; you need time for you both to think and heal.

You nod.

That night he cries a little, but he isn’t… agitated, and he doesn’t make the bad noise.

You hold him tight, and fall asleep on your own.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sans has had a lot of very unusual reactions that you’ve never understood (visible discomfort/sweating, anger, most of chapter 14...), and I will now tell you it’s because you’re from a low context culture and he’s from a very high context culture. Most of the accessibly worded papers on high/low context culture clash in english are about business.  
> https://public.tepper.cmu.edu/jnh/businessCommunication.pdf  
> In a high-context culture, the meaning of a statement changes depending not only on tone of voice, gesture, silence or implied meaning, but the context or situation. You have to know the cultural norms to know what’s going on…ever. That’s exactly the kind of culture that would arise from the situation happening underground.  
> If you still hate me that’s entirely understandable.  
> ETA: I added a chapter in the sidefic a few days ago here:  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/17952167/chapters/43319777  
> If you want to know what Sans and Grillby's relationship was like underground you can read that fic from the beginning if you're inclined :)  
> 


	47. Writers Should Learn To Not Split Infinitives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been an angst slog but Catharsis Is Coming
> 
>  
> 
> Dar Williams – The Ocean  
> https://youtu.be/3AdG0sdAVbI

You’re in the indoor garbage dump the skeleton you’re in love with calls a bedroom, and Sans is changing his shoes.

His socks are white, and so is the lace trim. You thought the sock stuff was a sexual thing for a long time, but you’re not sure when you started to understand that it’s not _necessarily_ sexual, but it’s private. And things that are private are also… sometimes sexual but not necessarily so.

You’d also noticed that if he’s in his own home, the same rules don’t apply. Like if someone visiting him sees his socks, that’s their own fault for being in his home?

Sometimes when he sleeps, his slippers fall off… but it only happens in a few places, now that you think about it. He sleeps at his stand a lot, but his slippers don’t fall off there. Ever.

You think of Frisk picking up his fallen slipper in his living room, following him with it as Papyrus carried him around to replace it on his foot. And you think about finding his slipper in the middle of the cleared floor space at Grillby’s, and picking it up yourself to put back on him. He’d made a Cinderella joke about it, a romantic one. You think about how often he sleeps when he’s at Toriel’s, and he even stays over sometimes. His slippers never, ever fall off there, no matter what kind of weird positions he ends up in. They only come off under the covers, and you’ve got a feeling it wasn’t always like that, was it. Toriel’s probably seen his socks a thousand times, but… she doesn’t _anymor_ e.

The socks Sans wears are the kind made for children, because his feet are so narrow when the bones are pressed together those are the only kind that’ll stay on; even with his magic to sort of grip on to, his bones are just too smooth. But why does he wear slippers in the first place when they show his socks? A mystery; you won’t embarrass him by asking. Maybe at some point you’ll figure it out on your own, just like he tries to figure you out on his own. He tries, and thinks, and watches, and asks people close to you. Pays attention enough to know who’s really close to you, and who’s none of your business.

You watch his busy little fingerbones smooth and tuck, curl under to make sure the fancy lace trim’s protected from rubbing itself frayed on the inside of the canvas sneakers he wears to ride his Vespa. Because they’re expensive, aren’t they. Not anymore, but they used to be. That’s why they don’t always match, and that’s why he takes such good care of them: washing them in Waterfall, hanging them to dry carefully since the water evaporates, but his magic doesn’t. The way he does this is actually a lot more complicated than you realized at first, the socks and shoes all going together in a way that always makes sure half an inch of them shows over the top of his shoes, although the trim stays hidden this way. Girding his loins for a drive. It’s a whole process, even though all he’s doing is taking you to the monster grocery.

You still have to buy yours, though he gets a generous allotment of ‘as much as he wants’ just like every monster who lives on or under the surface. You don’t mind purchasing monster food because doing it gives you a chance to show everyone your G, show that you’re valued by others enough to buy food this way. Show your commitment to hope, show that you’re lucky and loved. There are a ton of other ways to do that for monsters, but you have fewer options as a human and you’re still learning, too.

You keep watching Sans’s neat fingers do something they’ve done countless times, and only in front of the people he loves, and only then people he loves in a particular way. Or in the places that _belong_ to the ones he loves in a particular way. His family. He sees you looking and his face softens as he gazes back curiously, although his fingers keep lacing up his sneakers just as carefully.

“This is really romantic, huh?” you comment softly, resting your head on your hand with a sigh.

His face goes furiously iridescent light sea foam-green and the points in his round sockets lock back onto his shoes, but he looks _extremely_ pleased anyways. He doesn’t say anything, but when he’s done he stands up and leans down to hug you tight, gives you a little nuzzle on the top of your head. There’s a tiny sound that might be a giggle.

“you all set?” he asks, glancing to the side. You still see the magic seething a little along his zygomatic process.

He holds your hand the whole time at the grocery store, and doesn’t even let it go for you to pay.

“put it on my tab,” he tells the clerk with a wink, then waves goodbye with your joined hands.

***

 

You’re doing the dishes, thinking about Sans and Grillby.

You’d already known they’d been lovers for an unspecified amount of time before. You’d known Grillby had supported him during his time taking human partners for unfortunate reasons, and he’d somehow healed the damage it had caused. You’d just assumed that happened after they’d already ended their sexual relationship and traded it for a deep friendship, but apparently it _hadn’t_ ever ended. It had been going on for...hundreds of years? Thousands? You shudder, can’t even imagine.

What Sans is going through right now...well. You want to think that Grillby’s better equipped to deal with that than you are, but you’re too smart to sell yourself that line. _No one’s_ equipped to deal with this. You just do the best you can, and hope love’s enough.

That’s all anyone can do, and that’s what everyone who loves Sans is doing, whether they know what’s bothering him or not.

Same as they always have, and will continue to do in any way he’ll let them.

You flinch a little at that last thought, and close the cleaning appliance. Time to go do something else for a while.

 

***

 

You lean back into Sans in the tub, enjoying the company of someone who can stand baths as hot as you like them. You figure you’ll soak until the water starts to cool, then maybe wash your hair. Or not. It’s kind of a bother.

You sigh, content enough to feel hard bones on your back, hot water all around you. Appreciate the little things as much as you can, try to let the rest of it go.

“was jus’ wondering,” Sans says quietly after a bit.

“Hmm?”

“would it be okay if i did your hair for you?”

You sit up, slosh around to turn and look at him incredulously.

“Where did _that_ come from?”

You quash your impending mirth, because he actually looks mildly embarrassed, and his answer is hesitant.

“s’how people know someone loves you, right?” he says, glancing at the tiled wall his deep voice bounces off quietly.

Ohhh.

That’s what your sister says when Nattie and Shonda complain about having their hair done, because sometimes it takes a while, and sometimes it’s not comfortable. And they like it once she’s finished, barrettes or beads or neither decorating neat braids or soft waves or whatever they like; after all, it’s their hair. That’s what they’d been doing earlier today, each taking their turns in the chair, reading on their viewer or just staring at the wall, annoyed.

You reach up now and touch the frayed ends of your hair, which you don’t think about, do anything to, or take care of properly. You’ve been too tired, sick, or achey for too long to bother. It’s neglected enough that you don’t even have it cut anymore; the breakage takes care of it.

Oh.

“you don’t ask her to do your hair,” he continues tentatively. Huh. That’s actually… a _question_ , isn’t it. One you don’t have to acknowledge, but you can. And you _could_ ask your sister. But you don’t, do you. And when you think about it, it has an answer you never realized existed.

“I’m the oldest,” you explain. “I’m…”

Not a child, and not a sister. You could still ask, but you don’t. And you stopped paying someone to do your hair after… You blush, cover you face with wet hands in mild embarrassment. Because after you’d realized you and he were in a relationship, you’d just started ignoring your hair even more than usual, hoping he would offer.

Not a big deal or anything like that. Not required. Intimate without being necessarily sexual, but…

You either do or you don’t. You don’t _have to_ , but you _can_.

You blush and laugh, hold your hands to the side of your face like blinkers but glance over at him; when he sees your expression the uncertainty leaves and he looks pleased instead. You glance at his hands; decide not to make a joke or ask if he knows how to do hair since he doesn’t have any.

You want him to know you still trust his hands.

You want people to know you have someone at home who does your hair for you now.

You want him to touch you, take care of you in a way that you can both deal with in your current circumstances.

“I’d really like that,” you say instead, staring into the water and listening to him slosh-clack as he leans out to get the shampoo.

 

***

 

Thursday happens twice, and you spend it trying to make it bother you in as many ways as you can think of. You try to sharpen the idea of Sans loving and being loved, try to wound yourself with it. You spend the first Thursday trying to hammer it into a knife to push through your own tender heart, but it’s too soft a concept to forge. There are no edges to hone.

You spend the second Thursday, which is exactly the same as the first, trying to drink the idea and let it flood your veins, choke your soul with its thick, invasive poison. You imagine touching, sighs and moans. You imagine everything you feel when you touch him, without you there to feel it. Your love thins it without your permission, changes it to something else so it can be rejected.

You sob into the sink, because it’s not good or bad. The first half of Thursday happens again, and you're starting to catch on.

This is just something that _is_ , and you can’t twist it in a way that hurts you enough to create and shape your feelings for you. You’re responsible for how you feel, and you’re the one letting your own expectations of yourself waste your time doing whatever the hell this is. Trying to force yourself to feel how you believe you’re supposed to instead of being who you are, and dealing with your emotions in ways that help you.

Thursday stops happening eventually, once you decide your time’s better spent doing something else.

 

***

Monster culture’s like this because there are so few people, and so much time to fill. Desperate people need to find ways to keep hope alive in each other, to communicate and connect. To nurture and care for each other, to find or even invent ways to love in an impossible situation. The only way to make it work is with constant contradictions.

The only privacy is what others allow you, and secrets are slow poison. If you keep yourself hidden from others, you’ll shrink and twist inside until you disappear, until there’s nothing left to hold you together anymore. But you still need to be respected, find ways to acknowledge without confronting, to confront without acknowledging.

Your ways of coping and loving and surviving are nobody’s business, but everyone knows. They need to in order to keep their own hope alive, and you need them to so you know what’s happening is real.

You need people to fight and fuck and talk and connect with, and you need to feel _seen_ in order to survive a time-choked prison that no one might escape. You need people there to avoid, and to let them avoid you. They need to know you’re avoiding them so they don’t accidentally disappear; you need witnesses for your avoidance so _you_ don’t, either.

Come back, check in. Trade symbols of progress and change, find a new way to do the same thing over and over.

Everyone’s probably done everything they could think of with almost everyone at some point.

Everyone knows what’s going on, they don’t need to talk about it anymore. They know just be looking, they’ve seen it so many times. They're teamed up again, they’re arguing again, they’re alone again.

They say it without words.

They’ll die if they don’t talk about it, so they find a way. They say one thing and mean another, the thing you all know they mean. You just know, you don’t have to say so.

And if you _don’t know_ , well. There are ways to make sure you do. Ways to get on the same page, ways to make _sure_ you understand each other.

Even when you don’t.

***

“I was thinking about something.”

“hmm?” He pulls the covers up to his chin, gives you a slow, sleepy socket-blink.

“Remember the first time… when you showed me your soul?”

“heh...yeah.” His face is soft. “never gonna forget that.”

“The next morning you were cooking the quiche, and you took it out of the oven with your bare hands. It scared me because that’s something that would have injured _me_. Then you said something referring to Grillby and you touching each other... like you were reminding me you’re...flame resistant? and you looked at me weird right after. I thought you were worried I’d be jealous because we’d just started...um. Having sex? But you didn’t know about humans being jealous about that yet, right?”

He nods cautiously. Of course he remembers it. He probably remembers exactly what he said.

“Why did you give me the look? Like you were scared what my reaction would be.”

A crease appears between his sockets as he thinks about that. You’re ready to give this up as another super complex monster issue you’ll never understand when he speaks.

“touchin’ as much as i like to’s kinky,” he states bluntly. “specially how me an grillbz do. didn’t wanna put you off, even though i shoulda...known better. cause humans like touching.”

Oh. Apparently that’s finally complicated enough that he can actually explain it. Who knew. And it gels with what he’d mentioned a few times: that the way you’re attracted to him is like a monster would be. It’s the mental category he has for the way you feel about him. So he might react the same, even when he should know better. Huh. That makes you feel oddly heartened, like you’re not the only one who’s lost in your own ideas and assumptions sometimes. You also wonder how many other dirty jokes and salacious statements have gone right over your head.

“Like when you said the thing the night before about your soul jumping out into my hand?” you ask mildly, and he gets iridescent, but seems amused anyhow.

“yup,” he exhales, looking up at the ceiling. “was thinkin...”

He doesn’t say, so you try waiting. That works sometimes.

“stuff i say sometimes. how i act.” There’s a dry, embarrassed imitation of a laugh. “the...uh. my clothes.”

Oh geez. A good ten minutes pass this time.

“s’kinda slutty,” he whispers eventually. “um…forward. guess you, uh. didn’t know that either, huh? doesn’t seem that way t’you.”

“No,” you answer softly, honestly.

“gotcha,” he whispers back. “guess i shoulda realized that, but i didn’t. you don’t...think a me like that.”

“Nope.” You smile softly, though you don’t look at him. You’re thinking, too. “Maybe I should have realized. Like when you got angry. The... what I said at Muffet’s that time about you having a thing with every monster or whatever, the way you...”

You blink. “I should have _known_ , and I should never have said anything _to you_ ,” you breathe in understanding. “I should have known from seeing your reactions, and… you know. All those gossips at Grillby’s, all the...”

You trail off. Think about “Pervy Al” telling you directly about social stigma, telling you what she knew Sans wouldn’t. Think about all those gossips, the _ones with genitalia_.

Which Sans apparently also has now, even though he spent most of his life without, and even though they only show up sometimes. He takes great pains to never actually see them, though they appear to be for all intents and purposes a normal bodily process for him, even if they don’t actually perform a reproductive function.

He didn’t know that, though. Because trauma had put his body to sleep for an eon or two, and it had only woken up when he was in the throes of… essentially reenacting his initial trauma. And that was only after the effects of Frisk’s unhappenings and intermittent annihilations, _and_ the dissolution of his relationship with Toriel. With you, he thought humans made that happen to his body, or that something about the presence of humans made him want it to. If he had no way to know otherwise… Grillby’s probably never even _seen_ his genitalia. Probably doesn’t know, but he still wants to see him. Because whatever he and Grillby do together’s already stigmatized, or slutty, or… something? What had he said? Kinky.

“I don’t think you’re...kinky for wanting to see Grillby,” you add after what was probably ten minutes of silence on your part that time. “Although I’m gathering that has less to do with the...stigma thing...than the stuff you say and the way you dress?”

He looks confused; you’ll save it for another time.

“But now that I know that’s how you’re used to people looking at you, we might be able to avoid those kind of misunderstandings in the future.”

You wonder what he meant by his _clothes_ , though. It doesn’t….oh. Your eyes widen with sudden insight.

The socks and slippers, always showing the tops of the socks. Ohhhhh. It’s...it’s like someone who always has on fancy, expensive underwear, but not like….no, it’s like wearing a _garter belt_ , and always with a skirt short enough to see the straps. Just like you thought at first. Even though he actually needs them, it still comes off subliminally as unnecessarily provocative. Well, it seems like that to _monsters_. He’s not exposing himself or anything, he’s just dressing in a way that makes you think about what’s underneath, even though there’s nothing wrong with what’s underneath, or what he’s wearing. It’s just...forward.

Now you’re having fun trying to come up with a cultural equivalent for what he wears all the time. Maybe the equivalent’s a short skirt and garter belts, but with a t shirt and a tight jacket? He keeps his bones covered, and gets embarrassed if anyone sees his ribs in the neck of his shirts, which are loose enough to expose them from time to time, so maybe more like a plunging neckline? A low cut shirt’s much more provocative than someone taking out the trash shirtless, after all. A juxtaposition of fancy and casual, like...hmm. Like counterculture, maybe? And he really likes human music; so does Papyrus. Are they both like some kind of...punk rockers? You honestly have no idea how far off base you are with your theories, but you _do_ know something else.

You glance at him, and he looks like he really doesn’t have much insight into what you could possibly be thinking right now.

“I really like how you dress,” you grin impishly. He pulls the blanket up to rub his face, but not before you see it’s to cover up a flattered expression.

Something else occurs to you, too. “Do people think you and Papyrus act...childish? Sorry,” you add when his expression changes to obvious disgruntlement. “I know I’m being rude,” and you realize you are once you’ve said it. Interesting. “I just...it’s hard for me to figure out what everyone knows, because I didn’t spend millennia underground with all of you. I’m not trying to embarrass you… I’m trying to avoid embarrassing you in the future. Hurting you.”

He sighs, nods. It doesn’t make it easier for him to talk about, but he’ll keep trying. “people know we’re not _kids_ , it’s not anything like that. way paps talks, s’like…” he smiles fondly. “real rude sometimes. Like he’s not sayin it right out, but he’s… lettin you know he knows without sayin he does, but you worry he _might_. then he acts like he doesn’t know what you’re talking about if you call him on it.” His sockets narrow and his shoulders shake with silent mirth. “talks real loud, goes off by himself like mk used to when i sent em to waterfall ta get dogs stead a getting a group together. he wants people to like him, but if they don’t… that’s their loss, and he acts likes it. people act like that puts em off but… they like it. they like him, know he’s tryin ta help. always.”

He realizes he could probably just keep talking about Papyrus and you won’t press any more, but he obviously made a commitment to himself to try. “way paps goes on s’like a kid thinks a teenager acts, like...” his face gets interesting. “tryin ta be like their big sib,” he whispers in embarrassment. “geez,” he adds, iridescent. “but uh. how teenagers really are, that’s uh. people think it’s kinda how i act,” he admits eventually, magic seething in his skull. “secrets n shit, never by himself but always feelin himself. gets around everywhere and uh…” His grin flattens like he’s realizing a few things without particularly wanting to. Darts his eyes at you and turns almost blue. “got his fingers in everybody’s pie.”

Oh. _Ohhh._ There are apparently several more entendres buried in that phrase than you’d realized. Sans isn’t that good at minding his own business, especially when it comes to things that are nobody’s business. Checking up on people, seeing if things are on the up and up. Asking MK that stuff about Frisk, keeping track of which dogs are messing around with who. Who’s arguing with whom, what someone’s cousin’s husband said to Papyrus about the way he spends his time. You’ve sussed out by now that his unofficial ‘job’ is like a kind of informant, but one with the authority to make a judgement on whether anything needs to be _done_ about what he sees; he’s incredibly efficient because the answer is almost always no. He also performs the necessary function of making sure no one slips away without notice, no one just ‘disappears’, because Sans knows exactly where they are, and everyone knows he does, if not always how.

Holy shit. It’s...it’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it. And no one’s more suited to it than Sans. It’s another thing only he can do… by himself, at least.

But at the same time…

His behavior’s stigmatized, because _overt_ voyeurism is immature. Children learn by watching, so watching….is childish. They learn by asking, so asking is also childish. Being overt about either is rude, therefore adolescent. And as subtle as he is, for monsters it still counts as overt. Wow.

Knowing this makes you realize something that warms you strangely, makes your soul twist in a way that aches and soothes at the same time.

You press your lips together, then make a decision.

“Can I tell you something about yourself?” you ask after a few minutes.

He really thinks about it while he looks at your face, then nods cautiously. He knows what you mean.

“You and Papyrus are doing exactly what you wished you were doing when things were bad,”you say quietly, sincerely. When they were as bad as it gets.

“And not just...for yourselves. The way your lives are, the...what you do, where you live, the friends you made... all of it’s what you wanted to give each _other_ , too. You wanted to have a chance to figure out...how to be kids in your own way, since you never got to,” you explain, throat feeling a little tight. “That’s why you’re so proud of each other, and it’s why… you are how you are with each other. This is exactly what you both promised to do.”

He stares at nothing in particular, soft shock on his face as he rubs a corner of the blanket across his teeth. A bead of magic wells up at the corner of his socket, slides down the groove. His eyes lights find your face after a minute; another bead joins the first.

“really?” he rasps, and you nod adamantly.

“You take _care_ of each other,” you elaborate. You hear dissonant tones and static coming from somewhere inside his skull; you can’t understand but you have a feeling you know what it is anyhow.

“Care for him well and you won’t need to; Care for him badly and you’ll badly care.” The words they perceive when they check each other.

Or whatever that actually means… except _this_ is what it actually means. They’d both made promises to take care of each other, and had had that promise broken for them. So they’d made a pact to neutralize their abuser and damage their own minds, erasing memories they couldn’t live with in order to give themselves the best chance they could to actually keep their promise.

And they have, despite everything. That promise is in their _souls_ ; it’s felt, not spoken. It’s written for each other somewhere that can’t be tampered with, by someone or something that makes the clouds and decides when it rains.

No matter how many timelines Gaster spawned or Frisk annihilates, their promise remains as long as they need it to.

He can see the truth in your face, and the blanket covers the rest of his as he gives a quiet little sniff. He stays like that for a few minutes, and you let him go through whatever’s necessary for him to absorb that.

He exhales slowly, pulls the blanket down under his chin again. When you glance to the side at him he nods. His hand creeps into yours under the covers, gives it a squeeze.

“Wanna cuddle?” you ask in your Sans-impression voice with a hopeful grin. “Might be nice, even if we’re not feeling better yet.”

He turns to you, smiles.

“yeah.”

After a while of petting and hugging against his quiet ribcage, a little bit of kissing him and getting nuzzled, you sigh and bonk his forehead with yours lightly.

“I think you should go to Grillby’s,” you say, looking into his eyes and watching the points in his sockets change texture, shift focus.

“okay,” he agrees after a smaller, less fraught silence.

***

Sans goes to Grillby’s, asks if you want anything.

“Double burg and cheese fries,” you smile gently. Undyne says they’re great, even if they’re not on the menu. Grillby had told you a joke about how bodily fluids aren’t on the menu either, although he does serve them. Grillby works blue, just like Sans had told you. You just didn’t know how to listen, but you're learning.

This is Ebott, and there are a lot of things you don’t have categories for, things that everyone knows and no one can really explain.

The second the door shuts behinds Sans, the door to the garage opens and Papyrus powerwalks through it, loaded down with bags and bundles. One of them’s shaped like an ice cream cone. One of them’s black and silver, and he tosses it down next to you on the couch with a satisfied nod.

“Uh. Hi?” you try. You and he haven’t had a good hangout in quite a while, but you’d kind of expected that after whatever you’d done to remember what he couldn’t. You smile, and don’t worry about that.  
“ARE YOU READY? YOU SEEM LIKE IT.” He graces you with his most confident, winning grin. You look down at the pajama shirt that ends above your knees, bare legs and feet.

“Ready for…?”

“FOR _CAMPING_ ,” he informs you as if it’s the most painfully obvious fact in the world.

It’s November.

“AND DON’T WORRY ABOUT BRINGING YOUR TOOTHBRUSH!! I PACKED AN EXTRA ONE FOR YOU.” He hefts the ice cream cone bag, and you notice paper packets shoved in so tight they’re starting to spill out of the strain-broken zipper and onto the floor.

“Hmm,” you say thoughtfully. “Camping.” A few more paper thingies fall on the floor with a patter. “Yeah,” you sigh happily, looking at the world’s tallest living skeleton in his hot pants and t-shirt that says HOT PANTS on it, grinning at you like a boy scout. “That sounds awesome, actually.”

He rushes forward with his arms out, then rocks back on his heels to absorb his momentum when you hold out a hand.

“I’m putting on pants first.”

“ARE THEY HOT PANTS?”

“No.”

He looks crestfallen, and you sigh.

“Did you pack me hot pants?”

“YES!!! THEY-”

He cuts off as you hold out your hand demandingly without looking at him. You take the hot pants and put them on without standing up. They fit perfectly, although they do say HOT PANTS on the butt.

In hot pink glitter.

You sigh with renewed determination, and lift up your arms.

“I’m ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What happens at Grillby's is going down in the sidefic. It's going to be a two-parter and it's just my opinion but I think it's some of the best smut I've written.  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/17952167/chapters/43507130


	48. GONE FISHING

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tori Amos – Your Cloud  
> https://youtu.be/85y6P8t-1j8

Papyrus pulls some kind of fruit or...ball...out from somewhere you can see and just gnoshes right into it, a few fragments falling down onto your chest. You try one. Oh. It’s those flavorless thingies you get from the monster grocery sometimes.

You’re about halfway up the gradual slope on the north side of Mt Ebott, being carried in the big oval of Papyrus’s bony arms. It’s as surprisingly comfortable as usual and you're realizing how little he joggles you, even when he jumps over obstacles you can’t really see from this position.

He’s got you wrapped in a blanket against the chill of late fall, and you wonder if you should mention the fact that he’s eating in front of you now, and didn’t even bother to tell you not to look. You decide to err on the side of caution, considering how many misunderstandings you’ve had to wade through recently. Sheesh.

 

You’re inside a slowly increasing ball of blankets. Every once in a while another layer adds itself.

Now and then one of them goes… back where it goes.

 

 

“I SURE AM GLAD WE’RE OUT HERE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, CERTAINLY FAR, FAR AWAY FROM ANYONE WHO COULD BE CHILDISHLY EAVESDROPPING ON OUR CONVERSATION JUST IN CASE WE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING EXTREMELY PERSONAL WE CERTAINLY WOULDN’T WANT _ANYONE ELSE_ TO KNOW,” Papyrus grins, striding along at a good clip despite the many bags and bundles hanging all over him like he’s a display post in a department store. A surprisingly loud and mobile one.

“You’re losing your touch, Papyrus,” a chillingly familiar voice comments from somewhere below you. “Where’s the obnoxious laugh? The perfect innocence? The utter lack of anything resembling tact?”

 

***Camping Start!**

 

You blink rapidly as Papyrus hunkers down and sets you on a flat-topped rock, tucking another blanket around you carefully. He starts setting up a bunch of stuff you’d normally associate with camping, and quite a few other objects that are less so. Well… most of them are objects. You think that rock might be a person, or at least… sentient in some way.

He sprinkles the rock with fish food he pulls out from somewhere, then tucks it back wherever...it goes, you suppose.

 

He starts a fire.

He puts a pan on the fire.

 

He sets a boombox on a rickety tripod that probably should tip over and hits play, filling Ebott forest with the sweet strains of cumbia.

 

_Yo sé que tienes un nuevo amor...  
Sin embargo, te deseo lo mejor..._

 

He picks you back up and sits on the rock himself.

The flower approacheth.

 

_Como la flor!_   
_Con tanto amor..._   
_Me diste tú_   
_Se marchitó..._

 

“This is a little different than what you _usually_ get up to in the woods,” Flowey comments in a snide tone you’re not entirely sure is warranted as he looks _you_ up and down (or across, considering your position), for some reason. Then again, who knows.

“HAVE I TOLD YOU ONE OF MY LESS FAMOUS HOBBIES IS COINING PHRASES?” Papyrus replies brightly. “I’VE GOT ONE IN THE WORKSHOP NOW: THOSE WHO CAN, _DO_ ; THOSE WHO CAN’T, _REACH_. WHAT DO YOU THINK?”

The snide looks slides right off Flowey’s uncanny features, after a few moments he throws back his petalled head and laughs uproariously. He does the thing you’ve seen before, wiping away a tear that doesn’t actually exist with a curved leaf.

“Have I told you lately you were always my favorite?” he says, sounding unaccountably pleased.

“I DON’T DOUBT IT,” Papyrus continues in a tone that isn’t exactly fond, but isn’t exactly not, either. “HOW MANY TIMES DID YOU TORTURE ME TO DEATH?” he asks mildly.

“Not as many as you’d expect,” Flowey supplies in much the same tone. “It’s certainly not the most interesting reaction you’ve had. I couldn’t really get you to _do_ anything; you just screamed and died.”

“AHH,” he agrees after a minute. “SO I DID. THAT’S REASSURING, ESPECIALLY CONSIDERING WHAT YOU _TRIED_ TO GET ME TO DO.”

“Yeah,” Flowey agrees readily enough. “I wish I could be sorry about that, but...you know how it is.”

“INDEED,” Papyrus sighs, still looking a little distant around the sockets. “HOW HAVE YOU BEEN, ANYWAYS? IT’S BEEN A WHILE, AND VOYEURISM DOESN’T COUNT.”

Flowey smiles emptily.

“Other than being desperate to shuffle off this immortal coil? I’ve been playing some kind of game called “Cubes and Tubes.” I’ve had better, but it kills time like _nobody’s business_ ,” he says in the snide tone again, looking at you pointedly.

Oh my god. Is he really referring to what you think he might be? Your face gets hot, and he gets a little more smug. Hmm. Maybe not. He probably doesn’t know, he’s just trying to provoke with phrases often used as a catch-all for things monsters don’t usually say directly to each other. He’s fishing to see what you’ll bite, and just being generically _rude_. You look up at Papyrus, and from everything you know (oh god, now you’re doing it) about him, he looks extremely entertained.

Ohhhh.

This is a little like his relationship with Undyne, one of the only people stronger than he is, if lacking the same degree of nuance and control. Flowey’s ruder than Papyrus, and maybe even a little quicker on the uptake. Better at making implications, maybe. Or at least more direct about it, and Papyrus has a lot of fun deflecting what he says back into his face. Oh. He _reflects_ it back, like a mirror. And Flowey _likes_ that he can do that.

It takes all kinds, you suppose.

“THIS IS WHY YOU’RE THE ONLY MONSTER WITH A MORE CONCISE FANCLUB MEMBERS’ LIST THAN THE GREAT ORDER OF THE GREAT PAPYRUS,” Papyrus chuckles, and your mouth drops open. “MK’S PRESIDENCY WILL STILL HAVE TO REMAIN UNCHALLENGED FOR NOW, BUT THE FLOWEY FANCLUB IS ETERNALLY SINGULAR. LUCKILY YOU’RE ALWAYS YOUR _OWN_ BEST FRIEND.”

Wow, that’s really...direct, even for him. He...he can’t be referring to...Chara? You actually feel the blood drain from your face.

Flowey’s laughing even harder this time. Holy shit.

“No,” he contradicts, and it actually seems… sincere? “ _You’re_ my best friend, Papyrus.”

“WELL. WE ALL KNOW _WHY_ I’M YOUR BEST FRIEND. YOU’RE JUST BEING COY.”

Flowey’s eyes narrow, and he sighs dramatically. “Can’t do anything without an audience, can you?”

“WELL, I DO HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE MY _OWN_ AUDIENCE NOW AND THEN, DON’T YOU THINK?”

Flowey stares right into those endless black sockets for a long time, then his face actually...softens? Huh. You didn’t know it could do that.

“Harsh, but fair,” he agrees after a bit, although you’re not entirely sure what he’s agreeing to.

Then Papyrus puts the tip of one of his glove-fingers between his teeth and pulls it off, offers Flowey his bare bones with a similarly soft look. The eerie flower glances at you, turns away, then takes his hand (or what he can of it, at least) in his tiny, curled leaf.

You look up at Papyrus in shock as you hear a tiny keen of grief, then the sound of soft, regretful weeping reaches your ears.

“WE MADE IT THROUGH THE DATING MANUAL ALREADY,” he says defensively as your eyebrows hit your hairline. “AND COMPLETED ALL DATING HUB LEVEL CHECK PREREQUISITES. IT DIDN’T WORK _OUT_ OF COURSE, BUT PLATONIC HAND-HOLDING IS MORE THAN PERMITTED AFTER SUCH A HERCULEAN EFFORT,” He continues lightly, blinking his sockets at the weak light filtering through the trees.

“IT IS IN FACT ENCOURAGED, TO SHOW THAT THERE ARE NO HARD FEELINGS,” he adds, somehow wry and soft at the same time. The weeping immediately increases in volume and sincerity.

You’re astounded that Papyrus is willing to share something of himself with such a miserable creature as this one, but then you consider who he really is, and why he’s like this. You swallow a bit of sorrow as you also consider whose soul is reanimating him in this particular form; you know how Papyrus feels about Chara. And now of course you know exactly why, even if Papyrus doesn’t.

He doesn’t need to know to feel it.

He doesn’t need to wade through the horrors to do what he knows is right. He just needs to help who he can, and do something to fix what he sees in front of him. He spends a lot of time walking, after all. He builds fun things and leaves gifts under rocks and inside trees.

Not hollow ones.

Just trees.

 

_Me marcho hoy…_   
_Yo sé perder!_   
_Pero_

_Ay ay ay! cómo me duele…_   
_Ay ay ay… cómo me duele e e e e…_

 

You lean your head against a bony shoulder, somehow soothed by the strains of a being who claims not to have a soul weeping with remorse as well as increasing abandon.

“You’re even more like your brother than I thought,” you say quietly after a little while.

“NOT REALLY,” Papyrus contradicts agreeably. “I DO NOT REQUIRE THE SAME KIND OF...SHALL WE SAY, DIRECT SUPER-VISION MY BROTHER DOES TO IN ORDER TO GET THE JOB DONE. THE GREAT PAPYRUS IS NOTHING IF NOT FRUSTRATINGLY CONSISTENT, AFTER ALL.”

“T-that’s d-disgusting,” Flowey sobs faintly, and Papyrus’s sockets do something weird that you realize after a minute is meant to be a sort of eyeroll. It’s hard to tell, since you can’t see the black points in his black sockets. You know what they’re really called now, but you don’t even think the word just in case you might accidentally say it, and accidentally saying it might trigger a memory Papyrus has gone through a great deal of trouble and sacrifice to forget.

The least you can do is return the favor, if only you can figure out...how. It feels like it’s burned into your brain, and it makes you feel…. ‘not right’ is a good way to put it.

You don’t feel right, and you _haven’t_ felt right for about six chapters.

Something’s _wrong with you_ , and you don’t like it. Something’s wrong with everything, and it all feels...off.

Like something’s slipping away, no matter how tight you hold on. It doesn’t feel the same.

You feel fear.

It tastes bitter.

 

 

You’re shitting in the woods like a bear, and there’s a white dog staring at you.

It pants happily, then starts licking its genitals.

You finish up in a hurry and go back to where Papyrus is waiting for you, looking a bit grossed out around the sockets.

“I’D APOLOGIZE FOR THEM, BUT…. EH,” he says obscurely.

“Who was…” you trail off, not sure what you’re trying to ask.

“ _ANNOYING DOG_ ,” Papyrus scowls.

“These woods are kind of crowded,” you comment, blushing.

“...NNNYES,” he replies absently, sockets narrowed and scanning the underbrush. You jump as he makes several bones appear out of nothing, and tosses them away in a fanlike pattern. Then he scoops you up and starts jogging away with a smoothness that’d be the envy of paso finos everywhere if they still existed.

 

 

You watch Papyrus stirring whatever’s in the pan over the fire, thoughtful.

“I’ve been thinking,” you say after a while.

“A DANGEROUS PASTIME, I’VE HEARD,” he replies with his usual amount of hard-edged sincerity.

“A long time ago, Sans wanted to come pick me up and take me to ARTBALL. I got snippy with him, and… it’s hard to explain, but it scared me really bad to think about needing him to take me everywhere. And he still doesn’t. I can get rides from Diane, or Frisk...and now my sister, too.” And Papyrus is literally carrying you through the forest, no questions asked. You grin over at him, but he’s paying close attention to the stirring. He’s a very considerate skeleton. “I can get where I need to go without always having to ask one person and it’s...”

You smile strangely at nothing in particular.

“I feel relieved. Because no one can take it away from me, you know? Even if I can’t do it myself, there’s more than one person I can ask for help. I don’t have to be afraid, because it’s not all on one person. They can’t take it _away_ from me, and they don’t have to worry about having to put their own needs aside to do what I need them to do right now.”

That soup must be very interesting.

“Trusting people is scary,” you whisper softly. “I need so much, _all the time_. What if they get tired of it?”

Everyone gets tired of you at some point.

Everyone leaves.

~~Everyone ( _don’t leave me_ ) leaves.~~

Papyrus shivers, shaking something off like water. His skull comes up and his sockets are bottomless.

“THE GREAT PAPYRUS HAS NEVER FELT TIRED,” he lies glibly, brightly pulling up his brimming spoon. “AND DINNER IS ALMOST READY. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT-”

 

*BARK BARK BARKbarkBARKbark BARK BARK BARK barkBARK BARK BARK BARKbarkBARKbark BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK barkBARK BARK BARK barkBARK BARKbarkBARKbark BARKbarkBARKbark BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK bark BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARKbarkBARKbark BARK BARK BARK barkBARK BARK BARK BARKbarkBARKbark BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK barkBARK BARK BARK barkBARK BARKbarkBARKbark BARKbarkBARKbark BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK bark BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARKbarkBARKbark BARKbarkBARKbark BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK bark BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK

 

“-DOG SALAD,” he finishes sourly.

There’s a fried tennis ball sitting on the spoon he’s holding aloft, and as you watch it rolls off and plops back into the pot with another sharp BARK.

 

 

“I thought I could live with it,” you say quietly, shamefully. “I thought I would be okay. But I can’t, and I’m not. And Sans can see it when I look at him, he can feel it. It’s making him sick, and me sick too. I don’t know what to do.”

“YOU ALREADY KNOW HOW TO FORGET,” he asserts firmly. “JUST DO THAT.”

“But...” This is miserable. “What if I need to _know_ something? Doesn’t _someone_ have to remember?”

“THEN GO CHECK WHEN YOU CROSS THAT BRIDGE,” he says as if this too is excruciatingly obvious.

“Wh-” You frown up at him in absolute bafflement. Check?

“Check...who?”

“NO, _NO_ , NOT LIKE...” he sighs in frustration. “THERE ARE DRAWBACKS TO BEING PATHOLOGICALLY MISUNDERSTOOD, I SUPPOSE. A HARSH TRUTH, BUT FAIR ENOUGH.”

Papyrus sighs, looks down at you where you're shaking with fear and disgust, with rage and pain and hate and pity and horror and a lot of other things you can’t keep from eating a hole in you until there’s nothing left, with a sad sort of fondness in his sockets.

Like he can relate.

“We(integrity) do not have to experience time(subjective) the way others do,” he says, and it’s a mix of dissonant tones and static. A language you don’t know, made of sounds produced in a manner you can’t even imagine.

Which you understand anyways.

“Why do I understand you?” you whisper, mouth dry as a bone.

You can only understand Sans in this language when he uses movement to express it. Express his...font, you suppose.

Papyrus gives you a confused look, then it clears.

“I do not have a speech impediment(my brother),” he explains succinctly.

Oh.

_Ohhh._

“Oh,” you say faintly.

“I am understood (inherited; innate) exactly as I mean (truth), rather than how I wish to be (obfuscation: intentional).”

He rubs your arm vaguely with his gloved fingers while you decide whether or not to hear what he already told you. You’re not as brave as Papyrus, but nobody is.

Nobody can be, because no one else is _as afraid as he is_.

The least you can do for him is try.

So you acknowledge that maybe time being occasionally less than linear might be a bit more of an internally generated experience than an external force, although it certainly is a disconcertingly and factually real one. One you can’t entirely control. You might not _have_ to experience time the way others do, but...

“But I guess it’s a good idea to do time the regular style anyway when you can, right?”

He looks amused.

“Most of the time(conceptual) it is. However, I am not as smart(static/fluid) as my brother, so it is helpful to go(become) and check. Although it can be very distracting when I do it too often(subjective). I say(behavior) things that confuse people sometimes, which is a benefit as far as I am concerned(related: self).”

“Yeah. I know you,” you comment absently, and he blushes. “Sorry,” you whisper, glancing away. “Does...Sans know I’m like this?”

“Of course(observable),” he answers easily. “Is that why…?(incomplete-incomplete-incom-)” His face changes. “He could not tell you, because you would not hear(subjective). It would generate conflict.”

You don’t like that, so you ignore it.

“Is that why your bones are that way?” you ask slowly after a while. “Because it’s all...one piece?”

“Yes and No,” he replies after a bit. “In no particular order. Integrity(SOUL) is a part of who I am, but it is not all there is. My body is more continuous(SOUL) than I’d prefer, but there is nothing to be done about it, and in some ways I am left with even more mysteries(unobservable) than my brother in regard to the why of it(myself).”

You exhale slowly, lean your head against him. “Does it bother you?”

“No(incomplete)?” he replies, then you hear a quietly annoyed sigh. “Not as much as it used to (un/observable: incomplete/needs review/incomplete/ERROR...ERROR...ERR-)?”

“I think I know why you don’t talk this way often,” you reassure him. “There’s not much wiggle room. Why is it so much quieter when you speak like this?”

An amused exhale.

“Because you do not hear(physical) what I am saying(content); what you hear(physical) is a byproduct of my speech(action). What I am saying is given to you from me(SOUL)”

You blink a little, but you certainly follow. “It’s weird how much sense that makes, actually.”

“My font(PAPYRUS) is the framework through which you are able to perceive symbols(words) that are subsequently(temporal: nonspecific) delivering the knowledge to you. The way humans experience(physical) this is through volume, since that is the closest(similar) thing they have to experience it _with_ (possessive; grammatically inconsistent).”

 

 

There’s a white dog on your chest when you wake up.

It looks into your eyes, and you feel like you see something… in there.

**It knows you.**

“Why is everything so hard?”

It doesn’t say anything.

“Why was I born?”

It doesn’t say anything.

“Why did this _happen to me_?”

It doesn’t say anything.

“Why did _that_ happen to me?”

It doesn’t say anything.

“Why can’t I get better?”

It doesn’t say anything.

“Does anyone really love me, or am I just fooling myself?

It doesn’t say anything.

“Why is it so unfair?”

It doesn’t say anything.

“Why do I feel like shit so much of the time?”

It doesn’t say anything.

“Are other people real the same way I’m real?”

It doesn’t say anything.

“Where’s Papyrus?” you sigh, frustrated.

“He’s making you breakfast,” it barks into your face for five solid minutes, then winks out of existence.

 

 

He sighs deeply.

“I DO LOVE NAVEL GAZING DESPITE MY LACK OF ONE, BUT WHAT I AM TELLING YOU IS THAT WHAT IS HAPPENING TO YOU IS ACTUALLY SOMETHING THAT _COMES_ FROM YOU. A PART OF YOU THAT MIGHT ACT WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION. BECAUSE. OF WHAT HAPPENED? AND UNHAPPENED. AS WELL AS CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES….” He glances around furtively. “THAT ARE CIRCUMSTANCES.”

“I don’t think I can deal with that,” you reply.

He makes a show of looking you over carefully. “YOU ARE STILL IN ONE PIECE, SO IT WOULD APPEAR THAT YOU CAN.”

“That was Sans-worthy,” you point out, and he looks extremely disgruntled.

“MY JUST DESERTS FOR SAYING EXACTLY WHAT I MEAN. I CERTAINLY WOULD HAVE PREFERRED PIE.”

“I think I still don’t entirely understand. Why wouldn’t I just...skip to the end now?”

“THE...END?”

“Yeah.”

“I DON’T QUITE...EH?”

“See how everything turns out. If it’s okay or not.”

“That is not how it works (observable). If you wished to see _an_ end (subjective/temporal/opinion/relative), you could do so now...or perhaps you might need to wait another month or three(inexact-intentional).”

“Um. what?”

Papyrus sighs, then he looks down at you with an expression that looks slightly amused, but for some reason also reminds you of his brother.

“THIS OF IT LIKE...READING A BEDTIME STORY. NOTHING CAN STOP YOU FROM SKIPPING TO THE LAST PAGE AND READING WHAT YOU _ASSUME_ IS THE END FIRST, BUT DO YOU THINK THAT WOULD BE VERY SATISFYING?” He frowns, looks thoughtful for a second. “UNDYNE MIGHT, ACTUALLY. IT’S THE SORT OF...THING...EH.”

He’s quiet for a little bit, and you have the sinking certainty that if you want to know what Sans is doing right this second….you _can_.

You can...scroll down to the bottom (to the end; an end; AN END), hop right over…right over to Grillby’s….

… and check to see exactly they're getting up to. See what they say, what they... _feel_.

You can check and see what they've been up to for millennia.

You can see Sans and Lola under the table.

That is... _not_ supposed to be how this works, is it??

Why do you know the present??? Why do you know the PAST?

 ~~**(Why do you know what Papyrus _usually_ gets up to in the woods)** ~~

 

 

Papyrus turns his skull to look at you almost as enthusiastically as he’s stirring whatever’s in the pan over the fire.

“THE EGGS WILL BE READY IN FIVE MINUTES,” he informs you glibly.

“I feel like this has happened before,” you complain. You take your pills out of your pocket and dry swallow them.

“I HEAR THERE’S A CASE OF THAT GOING AROUND,” he sighs with impenetrable sincerity. “I OFTEN COME DOWN WITH A SERIOUS CASE OF A… THAT...THAT FEELING? YOU KNOW THE ONE. THAT FEELING, YOU CAN ONLY SAY WHAT IT IS IN FRENCH.”

You narrow your eyes at him.

It’s _always_ five minutes until eggs.

 

 

“I don’t know if I _like this_ , Papyrus,” you say faintly, hyperventilating a little. “It’s _really weird_ and it’s… making me feel weird,” you explain.

He shakes his skull slightly. “BUT YOU MIGHT… MISS THINGS, SOMETIMES. JUST ON ACCIDENT! LIKE!! … ANYONE MIGHT,” he adds a little self-consciously. Then his enthusiasm returns doubletime. “SO!! YOU CAN JUST GO BACK AND CHECK!! OR YOU CAN READ YOUR FAVORITE PARTS MORE THAN ONCE. _YOU’RE_ THE READER, AFTER ALL. IT’S UP TO YOU.”

You press your lips together, give him a look. “Are you making fun of my name?”

“I’m the last(blatant falsehood) person to make fun of anyone else’s name(PAPYRUS; Reader).”

You can’t help it. You start laughing.

“Integrity makes it hard to lie, huh?”

“ON THE CONTRARY,” he looks very surprised, blinks his sockets at you. “WE ARE THE BEST LIARS TO EXIST. I TELL NOTHING BUT LIES. AND _YOU_...”

He grins with razor-sharp innocence.

“YOU LIED TO ME AND SANS...SUCCESSFULLY?? AT THE SAME TIME?? THAT’S!! UNPRECEDENTED!?! AND IF YOU HADN’T GONE CAMPING _ALONE_ THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN A MERIT BADGE IN IT FOR YOU. OH WELL.”

His sincerity vivisects you effortlessly.

“YOUR LOSS.”

“I never lied,” you protest petulantly, unable to meet his gaze.

“THAT IS WHY YOU WERE ABLE TO DO IT,” he says with amiable crispness.

“How do you… wha?” you falter out.

“BECAUSE OUR DECEPTIVE SKILL IS DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL TO OTHERS’ DESIRE TO BELIEVE SOMETHING IS TRUE. WE MERELY SHOW THEM HOW TO DO THAT. THAT IS MUCH EASIER THAN THE WAY EVERYONE _ELSE_ HAS TO DO IT.”

Chagrin settles heavy on you.

They _wanted_ to believe you. So you...gave them something to believe. Papyrus had believed you merely wanted to surprise Sans with something nice; Sans had believed you’d come to terms with your own fears and trust issues. And you’d let them believe what they wanted to, then went and thrown yourself off a cliff.

Made them clean you up, and clean up after you. Made all your worst fears come true just to get it over with. Tried to make them leave, like you always do. Because they’re going to anyways.

Sent Sans into an episode, scared the everloving shit out of your Good and Cool Friend Papyrus. You’d bought time, but you’d gone about it the wrong way.

More than that, you’d told yourself it was the right thing to do, when it was really just the quickest way to get through parts of yourself you were too afraid to acknowledge and deal with properly. You’d lied to yourself and hurt almost everyone.

You’d been able to lie only because they trusted you.

Yeah okay. So. You guess you are a decent liar, enough to bullshit two skeletons for the price of one (the cosmic cost of bullshitting a skeleton is apparently severe damage to your own, as you found out.). You’re also kind of a shitty person for doing that. Papyrus is pretty good at showing you how to see that for yourself, isn’t he. When he decides it’s the right thing to do, he polishes his own integrity into a mirror you see your least flattering angles in.

“So, what? We just tell people what they want to hear? That sounds kind of... shitty.”

“LANGUAGE,” he sighs observantly. “ALSO, NO. WE...TELL THEM A STORY? THE BEST STORIES CAN BECOME TRUE IF WE WANT THEM TO. IN THEIR CENTRAL TRUTHS, AT LEAST. SO BY TELLING OURSELVES A STORY WE HOPE WILL BECOME TRUE, WE CAN HELP OTHER PEOPLE BELIEVE IT AS WELL.”

He leaps casually over a fallen tree without jostling you in the slightest.

“FOR EXAMPLE, I CAN TELL YOU THAT **GOOD THINGS WILL HAPPEN EVEN IF BAD THINGS HAVE ALSO HAPPENED, OR THAT YOU HAVE THE CAPACITY FOR HAPPINESS DESPITE NOT BEING HAPPY RIGHT NOW.** THAT IS A LIE, AND IT IS ALSO A STORY I HAVE TOLD YOU THAT IS BECOMING TRUE IN ITS MOST ESSENTIAL NATURE, EVEN IF IT’S NOT USING THE SAME PLANE OF REALITY TO OPERATE.”

“But...how do I forget on purpose?”

He looks down at you.

“SKIP THAT CHAPTER.”

You think about the way Papyrus is, how he speaks and what he says. He’s talking a world he wants to exist _into_ existence, he’s telling a lie he wants to help become true. He’s not judging you, because that’s not his job (you must be thinking of his brother). All he has to do is exist according to his own high standards, and if you look at him and see yourself wanting, perhaps you should reconsider your choices and think about making his lies a little more true in your own life.

Every word he speaks is a lie, because he never stops giving others to opportunity to make what he says true.

Because he believes in their best selves.

The selves he knows are in there, even if they’re hidden. Even if they can’t see it themselves yet. He’s not as patient as his brother, but no one can be. He doesn’t need “super-vision” to do his job.

He doesn’t need to see you to know you can get better.

“So...we tell a lie we want to become true? Or we try and...make it true, believe it’ll get better even if it’s hard to believe it right now?”

NYES,” he murmurs staunchly, leaping over a narrow gap in the world.

Maybe someone should have put a fallen log or a bush there instead.

“Like the.. **.the soul of a story**?”

He looks down at you, delighted.

“YES!!! EXACTLY.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/17952167/chapters/43574072


	49. orange you glad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Pet Shop Boys – Always On My Mind](https://youtu.be/wDe60CbIagg?t=42) (seizure warning for video)  
> [discussion of trauma, unhealthy sexual practices, and self-injury]

Sans comes back from Grillby’s with two burgers and a side of cheese fries, and some fries with ketchup for himself as well.

They’re as good as Undyne said.

“he knew,” he says heavily, shoving some fries between his teeth. You’re at his table, and no one else is home right now. It’s just as well, since you’re not in the mood to eat in bed. This feels like an oddly formal conversation.

“not _specific_ , jus’...that something like it happened.”

“Are you upset he didn’t tell you?”

He huffs a little, shoves another fry in. “’pparently he did,” he sighs. “says it was like...”

His eye lights flicker.

“like when i try to tell you stuff sometimes,” he says wonderingly. “you understand the words i’m saying, but...you don’t get it. like you don’t have a box to put that stuff in, so it just...slips away. it doesn’t mean what it should, or what i mean by it.”

“What words did he tell you?”

He sighs, eats a few more fries before answering. “i got a space where there isn’t anything. he said...” His brow creases lightly. “got a place where there’s _nothing_. that...i feel something that isn’t there. nothing in there, but bad stuff comes out. bad feelings.”

He sets a fry back in the container.

“bad…decisions.”

He’s quiet for a long time, then he gives up with the whole eating idea. You finish yours.

Still quiet.

“says he saw that kinda thing in the war,” he adds finally, staring at the table. “said that’s why lola didn’t talk before i started coming in.”

Oh.

“Did he tell you that last part more recently?”

He nods.

He leans his elbows on the table and covers his sockets with his palms facing you, bones pressed together.

“i let him push.”

You’re not sure what he means at first, and then you are. He let Grillby push magic into his soul. That thing he doesn’t do.

“How was it?” you ask.

“hurt real bad,” he answers softly. “made me come.”

You open your mouth, but nothing emerges. You’re no expert, but you’re pretty sure that’s not supposed to hurt, and Sans is embarrassed that it did. Embarrassed that he responded that way to being hurt, too.

“i don’t like it,” he continues after a bit, still hiding his sockets. He doesn’t look like he plans to do anything more to them than that; you feel relieved. “guess i had the right idea all along. i only like mine.”

“Does it still hurt?” you ask, concerned.

“nope,” he whispers. “he showed me how to fix it, make it stop hurting. guess he knows. i’m okay now.”

“Did you...do it back?”

Sans pulls his hands down, looks startled as he leans back in his chair. “...no? that’s not something...” he trails off, realized he’s just explained that he had done something he’s never done before. “didn’t think a that, but… know i don’t want to, now that i do.”

He shrugs, rubs his arm a little and sighs. “told you the truth. never wanted to share it with anyone else. everybody likes their own, but… i like it more than most people,” he confesses easily enough, touching his chest absently. “almost always have a lil bit in there. i don’t….” His brow creases slightly.

“it’s _mine_ ,” he says, sounding oddly possessive. He sighs, rasps a thumb over his forehead. “other people don’t feel like _that_ about it,” he admits. “jus’ me. and...someone else’s feels...” He shivers; his expression’s close to disgusted without being exactly that. “now i know i don’t like that done to me. know what happens. and...”

And now he knows why he doesn’t like it, you suppose.

Or...the reverse of that.

He already knew _why_ , and now he knows _what_. It’s kind of terrible that’s the order he has to know these things about himself in, but it is what it is.

“How can that...” you’re not sure what you’re trying to ask, but it seems like he has an answer.

“comes outta the place where there’s nothing,” he rasps hollowly. “shouldn’t be _able_ to hurt me, but it _does_. even… even if i don’t…” he rasps again, getting still.

He’s quiet for a long few minutes, looking at nothing in particular. He scoots his chair away from the table, so you’re both just sitting in chairs across from each other without the table between you anymore. Then he pulls his hand out of his pocket, holding a bottle. Not his usual, either. This is orange.

He drinks it, wipes tears off his face with his sleeve-wrapped fist.

“sometimes i try to hurt myself,” he says after a minute. “when i don’t feel right. like i said when we talked about what...i forgot.”

You just wait.

“i don’t even know i’m doing it, but… he stops me. he...” He looks ashamed. “holds me down, holds…my arms, cause i try to mess up my face, or...”

He indicates his lap, then he flicks his eye lights towards you. They don’t make it to your face before they hit the floor again. He makes the gesture at his chest with a sob, wipes a few more tears off.

He tries to hurt his face and where his genitalia used to be; where it is again, now. And his soul, too. You don’t even know how that last one is possible either, but apparently he managed it. You’re glad you don’t know how any of that would work, and that you don’t see it anymore. You hear a metallic clink, but it fades away without tearing at you like a fishhook now.

“Is that why you thought you hurt me? Because you do things to hurt yourself, and you don’t even realize it?”

“...maybe,” he whispers. He doesn’t look at you. There’s only so much orange can do. “but he… i know you told me the truth. it’s like you said. ‘m sorry.”

Maybe if you hadn’t successfully lied to him and Papyrus and hurt yourself so badly that time, this would be less of an issue.

We all make mistakes.

“he saw what...i thought about it. what i convinced myself, after we talked about what i forgot. said it wasn’t like that, and that i never did anything like that to him either. never tried to hurt him. jus’ tried to get him to hurt me a few times, tried to hurt myself a buncha times. that stopped for a long time, then...other stuff happened. frisk. me n tori split.”

He closes his sockets and inhales sharply, shivers hard enough to wiggle his skull, sighs it out.

“so i found people who _would._ when it… got real bad. told you bout that, but…”

He looks miserable, and his voice disappears.

“Sans-”

He cuts you off with an adamant headshake. He pants, then pulls out a second bottle.

“some of em might not even a _known_ what they did hurt me,” he rasps tightly once it’s gone, staring a hole in the floor with pinpoints barely there in his sockets. “that’s _fucked up_. it’s _selfish_.”

Oh. That complicates some of the conclusions he’d come to, and helps you understand them a little better. If he’d used someone to to feel good or to hurt himself, it’s still _using someone_ , isn’t it. You’d felt that in his soul before, too. Fear, disgust, people taking from each other without caring. Holy shit. He’d _told you_ about that too, when you’d first asked about souls, and what monsters like to do with theirs.

 _...not like human stuff, grab first and ask how it felt later..._ _y’can’t not care..._

Oh. Monsters _don’t do_ stuff like that. Because they can’t not care. It’s antithetical to what they're made of, their core of love, hope and compassion. He’d come undone over it, Frisk had unhappened it without knowing why, and it’s possible he doesn’t even know, considering the state he’d already been in anyhow.

He closes his sockets, takes a deep breath. It comes out slow this time, and he manages to glance at your face. His shoulders relax a little once he does.

“lola helped me with that… grillby did too. i got better.” He opens his sockets; looks down, looks thoughtful.

“but...it’s like when you drink him. does something that stops that feeling. when we touch each other he helps me feel like i _wanna_ feel, but that’s almost always another part of _me_. not like with most people. i mean... we feel each other, too. but he shows me where to be...okay with how i am.” He takes a deep breath, sighs it out. “it’s not like when me and you touch each other, when it’s like...” His fingers weave together in a manner you’ve never seen before, and that you could never imitate. It’s strangely evocative, enough to make you hold your breath. “it’s...different. me and him, that isn’t like _us_.”

He shakes his head. “don’t gotta be _careful_ with him, cause it’s...not _like that_. and me being messed up doesn’t matter to him, cause...he wants to help. so we help each other remember how ta feel good, cause we both…”

He trails off, probably thinking about whether or not Grillby would want you to know something.

“we both got a _lot_ a trouble with feeling how we wanna feel,” he offers, and that’s good enough.

He’s telling the truth.

“You didn't want me to see you like that, but...” you sigh. “It’s that thing again. Where you want to keep me out of it, but you’re keeping me out of… not just your life. It’s part of _you_.”

Something falls away from his face, and he looks at you nakedly as he hugs himself, leans over like he’s sick.

“what if you touch me and all you see is me getting hurt?” he rasps, ignoring his own tears. “i could see it when you looked at me. that’s what you… i couldn’t _deal with that,_ you couldn’t either. i _saw_ it. we _felt_ it.”

You give your own shaky exhale, then smile weakly.

“I forgot.”  
His eye lights flicker.

“Just like Papyrus did, okay?” Not like Sans did. It’s still there. “He…” You look to the side, think about what you want to say here.

“We went camping.”

“how was that?” he asks a little flatly.

“Fucking weird,” you answer bluntly. “But we sorted a few things out that really needed sorting. Between us, and some...other things, too.”

He nods hesitantly.

“I _forgot_ ,” you lean in, make sure he’s looking at your face. “All I remember is what we talked about. I don’t know more than you, and _I don’t know what it looked like._ ”

He looks at you frankly.

“forgot the remembering, too?”

You nod, blushing.

You know how you remembered; you don’t remember what it _felt like_.

He sighs and glances away, grin crimping at the edges before relaxing back out.

“he’ll appreciate that.”

He looks back at you, and his face softens again.

“dunno if it’s weird to say, but...i feel a lot better. he made some a what was going on with me stop. might be for good.” He glances away and gestures toward his lap. “doesn’t bother me to look at it anymore. still don’t know how it works exactly, or… how it’s supposed to. but it...feels like it’s mine? ‘stead a something happening to me, i guess. m’not...scared of it.”

Well. That _is_ a tangible improvement. You stare at a crumb on the table that’s kind of shaped like Annoying Dog. It’s got a long shadow from where the light’s hitting it sideways and frontways at the same time; everything’s blue from the overcast sky, yellowy from the magic lights over the table.

You shiver; it’s still November.

It’s November again, too.

Who knows, maybe you’ll even get to see a third together. You’ll have a better idea of the odds after this conversation.

You smash the crumb with your index finger, bring it your mouth while staring at the spot it used to be and lick it off.

“Is Grillby like your… sex therapist?”

He shakes his head. “i got no idea what that is.”

You pull up some information and send it; he actually eats some more fries while he reads it. You’d thought he’d given up like usual; this really _has_ done him some good. Everything’s happening in more or less the same order, so you assume it’s done you some good, too. You remember how you felt before, and this is a definite improvement over somewhere between 25 and 75 percent of you wanting to scream and never stop all day every day.

“nah,” he says finally. “he’s just….grillby. got his family recipes, got his food, got...keeps a place where everyone goes when they need...” his voice peters out. “ _anyone_ can, when we need to be, um. need to feel… we don’t say it, but we…” he trails off again. “never had to _explain_ it,” he tries, glancing at you desperately. “everyone jus’ _knows_.”

You take a deep breath, sigh it out.

“ _Try_ ,” you say emphatically. “Or maybe just keep it complicated?”

He looks thoughtful for a second, then nods with a crease between his brows.

“you were right,” he says after a minute. “me n grillbz, we _are_ something. he told me...” he looks distant. “he said that me and lola make it so he can do what he does. i don’t understand, but...” he rummages in his pocket, pulls out a bottle. “no one else is allowed to take this with ‘em. just me. and i _knew_ that, but...”

A very mixed expression flits over his features.

“grillbz doesn't have anyone to tell me that but him,” he whispers as if he’s just realizing. “and he’s… kinda quiet.” You press your lips together; that’s a way to put it. “he’s the only one that _knows_ what he does. the only one who knows what we _are_ , whatever it is. he’d want you to know that, but don’t...say anything to him?”

He looks up at you, and you nod.

“i even asked him if it had anything to do with seeing each other, he almost laughed me outta bed. it doesn’t. has to do with me needing to change the mood, and him needing me to bring people in that need him and his place, if they don’t know where to find him.”

“Like me?”

He grins soft and sincere.

“yeah,” he replies emphatically. “’specially people like you.”

He thinks quietly for a minute.

“people that need some good food, some bad laughs, and some nice friends. people who’re hurting… lost. make sure grillbz doesn’t get lonely, make sure he can keep doing what he does for people.”

His expression changes. “but… that’s how we do it. gotta trust your people to let em know what you need em to know, make sure everything's on the up and up. but he doesn’t have anyone like that. jus’...” He stares at the bottle in his hand. “jus’ me an lola… and his kids don’t live up here. He rasps his hand over his face, then sets the bottle and his hand on the table. Looks at both for a long while.

“guess i didn’t understand.”

You think about Alphys and her instant noodles; not telling you everything, just everything she knew Sans wouldn’t.

You think about Undyne making a confession about flowers.

Lola’s hand rasping your money off the table for the last time.

Papyrus tossing you a perfectly unblemished rose.

Grillby saying he doesn’t wonder what Sans sees when he looks at him, because he _knows_.

Mettaton’s sincere thanks and encouragement.

Toriel telling you about realizations that don’t ever end.

Frisk, telling you that you can stay over.

Sans belongs with _all_ of you; Sans doesn’t belong _to_ anyone but himself. You belong _with_ everyone, you don’t belong _to_ anyone and you don’t want to, either. That game gets old fast.

“I can relate to that,” you answer quietly, and reach diagonally across the corner of the table to take his left hand, where it still rests beside the bottle. “But I have to ask you something else, too.”

He nods.

“What are _we_?”

His teeth part slightly, and he looks down at your joined hands. “i love you,” he says quietly, looks back up. “wanna be there for you however you need, help you out. want you to help me, be with me, stay over. look out for each others’s people. wanna be with you s’much as i can, spend time laughing and touching each other. be... _together_ ,” he says emphatically, squeezes your hand. “talking ‘bout everything… doing a whole lotta nothing.”

“Are you my boyfriend?”

“’m not a boy,” he points out.

You shrug. “Me either.”

“more than a friend, i hope.” He grins weakly.

“I guess we don’t have to name it,” you grin back just as weakly. “I love you, too. But...what do you want from this? Us?”

“wanna be with you as much as i can,” he repeats, “however ya let me.” His face goes enigmatically soft, complicated and fleeting. “wanna sleep with you like we been lately. even if we’re feeling better. wanna _take care_ of each other,” he whispers, shivering lightly.

His eye lights search the floor aimlessly as he mutters in the not-language only he and his brother know, and his impediment prevents you from understanding him at all. Only his brother can understand when he talks like this; it’s called ~~WingDings~~ and you _shouldn’t tell him_ that, or his brother, even though you’ve forgotten why. For some reason you remember _that_ ; there’s more, but you leave it where it is.

He looks up, something terribly vulnerable in his face. “i wanna make a...” he pants a little. “make a… promise, maybe?” He shivers hard this time. “want you to know i’m not _going anywhere_ , no matter what happens.” His face does something weird. “even if i go somewhere.”

He pulls something out of his pocket.

It’s a key.

“finally made another one a these. kept meaning ta do that, but...”

You let go of his hand, pull out a new set of star charms.

“I kept meaning to get another set for you, but...”

“lotta stuff’s always happening, huh? s’like there's not enough time.”

“We have to make time and pay attention, or we’ll fuck everything up. Miss things. Even really important ones.” You smile gently. “Papyrus told me.”

His exhale’s explosive; he looks at you with concern. “said something to you about it… real long time ago. that morning i made you eggs. but you didn’t...react. thought i was wrong til you said it again a lot later, but you still didn’t hear me. not until after… the summer, i asked papyrus about it finally. and he...well. you know how he is.”

You _do_ know how he is.

You also _know_ how he is.

He’s afraid, all the time. He tries not to let it dictate his behavior, but it doesn’t always work, no matter how high his standards for himself are. Sometimes he lets it get the best of him, and he doesn’t want anyone to know so he acts like everything’s fine. It’s a lie he tells himself, and tries to make true.

He’s not perfect. No one is.

“I’ve been waiting for you to get tired of me,” you admit reluctantly. “I thought you finally did. I was giving up.”

His face crumples as much as it’s able.

“think maybe i did what you did,” he says after a while. “took the easy way through it stead a trying to work it out the hard way cause i was afraid. felt like we didn’t have time, and...i dunno how to _deal with that_ ,” he admits, looking at you in a sort of helpless confusion.

He actually has a bit of a point, or at least is giving you some insight into his thoughts and feelings that you didn’t have before. You consider how alien the idea of _not enough time_ might feel to him.

“Did Grillby tell you that, too?”

“in a manner a speakin,” he admits, shrugs uncomfortably. He sighs it out after a second, though. “yeah. still got more stuff i gotta talk to you about, but i need a break fore i’m ready for all of it.”

“That’s okay,” you smile gently. “I’ll make time.” Your smile fades a little. “I think all of this was more than our relationship could take. It almost broke, didn’t it?”

“i don’t like to think about stuff like that,” he whispers.

“Maybe that’s part of the problem,” you point out reasonably enough.

You both sit there with that for a second, then you continue.

“But this was _way too much_ , and we had to spread it out. You told me to talk to someone, a few someones maybe, go see the kids being kids, get out of my own head. I told you to go have sex with Grillby, because you kept getting stuck and I couldn’t help you. Because we could barely stand to cuddle each other and we couldn’t stop either, and were making ourselves really, really sick from it. You needed to stop feeling it, and I needed to stop seeing it, and we couldn’t help _each other_ do that. Because we can't get every single thing we need only from each other all the time. I guess… no one can.”

“think i get what you mean,” he mumbles.

“I don’t know if it was the right thing to do, but it was the best we could under the circumstances.” You sigh. “You too, I think.”

Apparently being told you think he did the best he could makes him cry.

You think about it, and then you cry because you told yourself you did the best you could, too. Didn’t you.

But you both can do better from here.

“Maybe that’s what we should promise. To do our best to take care of each other, stay with each other, and...love each other,” you say, wiping your eyes with the hand that isn’t holding the rubber charms. “Promise to do the best we can.”

He nods fervently and you hold out your arm.

Hr puts the key where you can always find it; it lasts until it’s used.

You attach the star charms; they last until he fiddles them to death.

Then you have to decide all over again, keep your promises, keep on trying. You can’t take each other for granted, and you can’t stop meeting each other’s standards.

You can’t stop deciding to love each other: every day, every moment, however long that is.

You go to his bed together, and hold each other tight and close, limbs tangling with the ease of practice and oozing comfort into each other despite everything. You talk quietly about some article you read, he tells you about some silly gossip he had from Lola while he waited for Grillby to make the food you’d both eaten. It also turns out the burgers are made from dirt, which actually gets you to laugh. They’re still delicious; whatever Grillby does to them makes them amazing. Then you both get quiet, touch each others’ faces hesitantly with your fingers, then touch your faces together with a mutually poignant sigh. You kiss him, and he nuzzles you; his teeth part and let lets you slip a sliver of your flesh into the unknowable, secret dimension inside his mouth.

Then you both start crying because you can feel each other again inside. Reaching out, acknowledging. Not yearning, but not quiet anymore. It feels good, it finally, _finally_ fucking feels _right_ , and it makes you feel the exhaustion of all that talking like slow lead filling your bones, so you keep on holding each other until you fall asleep.

 

 

 

 


	50. duck out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David Bowie – As The World Falls Down  
> https://youtu.be/VppuD1St8Ec

The kids are almost ready, so you and Sans finish your ‘dogs and groan laboriously to your feet, shuffling around to put the detritus of your traditional feast on a platter for one of them or you to dispose of later.

“you decided yet?” Sans asks Ange mildly.

She sighs, then holds out her hand nervously. “I’ll go first, then let you know.”

He just inclines his skull and takes her hand, then leads her out to the kitchen for her very first shortcut.

“she says it’s okay,” he mumbles a few minutes later as he returns to the living room, and the kids cheer. “gotta keep your eyes shut though. got it?”

“Okay!” Nattie yells, holding out their arms demandingly. Sans leans down with a grunt, then scoops them up onto his hip as they whoop with glee. He offers Shonda his other hand, and she takes it shyly. They go too as you finish buttoning up, and when he returns you ask how it went.

“fine, though shonda didn’t listen and got a lil seasick,” he giggles absently as he rummages in his pocket. “ange said it serves her right. oh, uh. jus’ a sec.” Sans pulls some paper out of his pocket, does something very quickly that folds it long and narrow, flips out a few triangle-shaped points, then attaches both ends somehow to create a circlet. He puts it in his right hand, then produces a pen that stays in his left. You watch him write f-r-i-s-k. on it, then plop it on his skull like a crown with a slow, happy blink of his sockets.

“You’re dressing up as...Frisk?”

“mmhmm,” he hums agreeably. “they’re me, so it’s only fair.”

You laugh, then hold out your hand and shut your eyes.

You’re in some kind of big, long cavern with bare grey ground stretching out far in every direction. There are several tables, soft chairs, hard chairs, and two mismatched sofas placed haphazardly around in the middle. The kids are talking to MK, while Angie’s chatting vigorously with Frisk.

“that’s the stuff we got together that’s fireproof,” Sans explains with a grin. “gotta go pick up grillbz next; his kids are comin.”

Sans’s gaze lights on something behind you, and his whole face goes soft. You turn around as Papyrus walks up, wearing some kind of...superhero costume? It has big round shoulders, and a ragged red shawl flows behind him capelike when he walks. The whole thing’s definitely homemade, and slightly shabby in a charming way. He’s carrying a big platter filled with paper cutouts of animals, snowflakes, and other more mysterious shapes that flutter when he moves quickly.

“heya, bro. what’s shakin?”

“HUMANITY IN THEIR BOOTS WHEN THEY CATCH SIGHT OF THE GREAT PAPYRUS, ULTIMATE ROYAL GUARD,” he replies inexplicably, and Sans’s face gets even more fond as his brother holds out the platter. “WOULD YOU LIKE A DUCK?”

“mm. got anything lighter?”

“NOW’S NO TIME TO GET PICKY, SANS. YOU’VE GOT A COMPETITION TO JUDGE.”

“that actually seems like a real good time to get picky,” Sans grins. “mm. how bout…” he points.

Papyrus plucks a wad of paper curls from the platter, drops them onto his brother’s upturned and compressed metacarpals.

“THE SPAGHETTI!! AN IM _P_ _ACCAT_ _A_ BLE CHOICE THAT REFLECTS WELL UPON THE HIGH STANDARDS OF YOUR UPBRINGING” he says approvingly. “I RAISED YOU WELL.”

Sans snorts dryly as Papyrus turns on his heel and stalks over to Nattie to proffer them the platter as well; it’s no surprise when they choose a dog. You watch Sans slip the paper curls into his pocket as you both trundle over to the couch and settle in. He immediately slumps over sideways onto you with his head in your lap, and you smile down at his skull as the paper crown tips off and into your lap beside it.

“Didn’t you just say you have to go pick up Grillby?”

“mmhmm.” He blinks sleepily, then his sockets slide shut. Before you know it, he’s hijacked you off into slumber along with him, and you have a funny little dream about sock puppets making out with each other before an especially sharp shriek from Shonda wakes you up sometime later.

“HAVE YOU SEEN THE PAINTING YET?” Papyrus caws from right beside you, making you jump again. You blink down at your lap; Sans is gone but the circlet’s still there, and you tuck it into the capacious pocket of your hooded onesie pajamas, styled on the hood to look like a goat. There’s even a little tail in the back, which had made Sans giggle maniacally when he’d seen it. You hadn’t asked why.

“No,” you manage after a minute, then rummage in your pocket again for a pill. You’ve stiffened up sitting here for however long and falling asleep like that, and you look around bemusedly.

“This is more people than usual,” you comment, noticing Toriel talking to Sans (he winks at you saucily), Grillby and two other fire people you assume must be his children near a table covered in bottles and glasses, and Frisk, MK, and Endogeny over by a table with several plates of cookies on them. Alphys is looking amused and drinking alone near the fire elementals, and when you follow her gaze you see that Undyne is, um. A...duck? Is somehow carrying her around the cavern a few inches off the floor...by her head. There’s also a familiar and rather elderly monster drinking, snacking, and avidly cheering on whatever that is.

“Wait, is that… Gerson?”

“UNDYNE WANTED HIM TO SEE HER NEW PORTRAIT! OF COURSE.”

You sigh tolerantly. “It’s not that I don’t want to, I’m just going to need at least a few more minutes for the meds to kick in before I can really get up and around, Papyrus,” you point out reasonably enough, then continue before he can do more than inhale in protest. “And I plan to get up and around under my own power today,” you add adamantly, so he continues pouting. It’s funny watching him do that without lips; his jaw just kind of sags and his sockets get teardrop-shaped. It’s not very flattering, and you can tell he knows it. Like he’s getting revenge by denying you his handsomeness.

“SIGH,” he hollers peevishly, then slaps his femurs with a glove-muffled clack as he actually sighs instead of just saying sigh.

“Why don’t you see if Frisk wants to be carried? They’re dressed for the part,” you grin, nodding towards their blue-clad back. You have to admit the outfit’s pretty impressive, a duplicate of Sans’s usual in every way except for being several bolts of cloth larger, and their pink house shoes are probably as long as his tibias.

Papyrus pouts even harder, making you giggle because now he just looks drunk. “DON’T HUMOR ME,” he gripes. “BUT…” His sockets narrow in speculation this time. “I MUST ADMIT MY HUMOR SENSES _ARE_ TINGLING.” He blinks his sockets at you, then stands dramatically. “I’LL FORGIVE YOU THIS ONCE, BUT PLEASE BE MORE CONSIDERATE IN THE FUTURE.” He stalks off without another word towards Frisk, then deadlifts their bulk onto his narrow hip as they let out a toneless quack of surprise. They huff their weird laugh at him, wrap their hoodie-clad arms around his impossibly broad shoulders and give him a big hug. Undyne has finally been released by the extraordinarily obliging duck, so she barrels across the cavern bent over, shoves her head right under MK’s poncho and hoists them onto her shoulders, challenges Papyrus to a race, and… well, that goes about how you expect it to. You watch for a while, and it’s entertaining enough, you suppose. You and Sans catch each others’ eyes again. He smiles slow and steady, and you feel a strange little flutter in your belly.

“Hi, ti-ti!!” Nattie yells right behind you, making you jump and gasp. They come around the couch, fold their arms on the armrest with wide eyes and set their chin down apologetically. “Sorry, ti-ti,” they whisper theatrically. It’s like they’ve been taking Papyrus lessons, which you generally approve of. He’s a pretty good role model, in your humble opinion.

“It’s okay. Are you having fun?” you ask amiably.

“Mmm hmmm,” they say seriously. “It’s not like Halloween, though.”

“Yeah,” you agree. Halloween was like a month ago. “This is ARTOWEEN. Did you see the painting yet?”

“Mmm hmm,” they agree seriously. They’ve apparently been taking Shonda lessons too. “It’s really green. Did you have a good nap?”

“Yeah,” you sigh. Nattie’s costume reminds you of a giant carrot, but apparently it’s meant to be their classmate who’s a kind of monster you’ve never met before, since they mostly still live in UnderEbott...or rather _under_...UnderEbott. In the ground. Shonda’s dressed like a character from something you’re unfamiliar with and trotting gamely alongside the roughhousers, hollering breathlessly and trying to get MK to talk to her about post-apocalyptic agricultural viewbooks again. She might be getting a little crush, she’s about that age. Get a nice safe crush on an older and unattainable person who knows how to be nice without making it weird. You make a note to keep an eye, but MK’s a good kid, of that you have no doubt. You smile, then blink as Nattie’s tiny hand waves in front of your face. You turn your head and frown but they sign “You’re spacing out, and you said to let you know!” insouciantly, so you blow a raspberry at them.

They’re right though, and you test your hips by shifting in your seat a little.

“You gonna just stand there, or are you gonna help your ti-ti get up?” You grin like a true Elder, holding out your hand insistently.

They do, then run off to pester Papyrus for more paper snacks. You sigh, then frown. It’s odd, you’re not bothered and you’re not in pain, but you’re not as into this as you usually are. Maybe it’s just that everyone seems so much more….much? Than usual? Sans and Toriel are still having their chat, and you decide to wander over and see what’s up.

As you approach, you notice Toriel lean down so Sans can whisper in her ear; she blushes furiously through the baby-fine white fur on her cheeks and forehead, covers her mouth with her hands as she giggles and snorts in a rather undignified fashion. Rather than leaning up, she settles down on her haunches so she can more easily whisper in his acoustic meatus in turn; his eye lights flicker and pin, and he covers his fixed grin with mittened hands as his shoulders shake with half-suppressed mirth.

You open your mouth as you approach, but both of them quickly hold a finger in front of their mouths, then beckon you eagerly with an air of schoolchildren. You wander closer, bemused and increasingly curious to stand in front of them, making a little circle. Speaking of which, you pull Sans’s little paper circlet out of your pocket and set it on his skull with a flourish, nevermind that it’s slightly rumpled now. Toriel’s dressed like what you suspect is her idea of what ‘a schoolteacher’ wears. There’s an argyle cardigan involved, at least… and some rather racy argyle _socks_ tucked into brown loafers the size of small canoes as well. So, a _sexy_ schoolteacher, then.

Toriel beckons you even closer silently, and she leans in to whisper in _your_ ear before you can object. She hesitates, then she signs. “May I speak frankly?” Good, she’s caught on. It’s not like you can lipread if she’s talking to the side of your head, so you nod and present your ear gamely.

“Motherfucking cocksucker,” she whispers tightly, then giggles madly as you gasp and blush. Wowwwww. You turn your head to stare at her, then dart a look at Sans who’s giggling expectantly. After a minute he taps his temporal bone suggestively with a phalanx, so you lean in and whisper “Motherfucking cocksucker?” in bafflement. He snorts derisively but looks at Toriel when he does it, shakes his head and beckons her again.

This time when he whispers, she gasps and looks over at you with bulging eyes. When she glances back at Sans, he just lifts the top of his sockets and grins challengingly at her until she beckons you again.

“Cloaca queef armageddon,” she hisses tightly into your ear, and you clap both hands over your face and laugh until tears squeeze out between your scrunched-shut lids. It just sort of goes on like this, and you realize it’s not about repeating, and this isn’t telephone.

This is pure one upsmanship. Time to get creative, and you do. After a few more rounds, it’s a surprise you haven’t peed your pants, but the next time Toriel whispers in your ear, it’s the same thing you’d whispered to Sans.

“Dickfaced twatburger with a buttload of ass fries,” she chokes unsteadily, and you pull back, blinking in confusion.

“But... that’s what I said...” you protest, glancing surreptitiously at both of them.

Sans grins with a short-barked laugh, then takes your hand and hoists it sort-of-in-the-air in gentle triumph. “we got a winner,” he guffaws, sockets oval with pride.

“Beginner’s luck, I guess,” you sigh, shaking your head.

“I accept defeat with my characteristic grace,” Toriel announces in her usual musical tones. Someone else has been taking Papyrus lessons, apparently.

“I don’t know what that was supposed to be, but I’m glad to be your champion?”

“The name of _that_ game is not appropriate for mixed company,” she says with affected aloofness, and you and Sans laugh some more.

“I’ll have him tell me later,” you grin. She giggles and blushes with a significant look, then nods and departs for Frisk’s vicinity ostentatiously.

Geez.

Sans looks at you fondly. “that outfit doesn’t get less funny,” he comments, and his grin sharpens as you turn around and wiggle your little goat tail at him. “makes me wanna-”

“Hey _hey_ there, pops!!” A brightly crackling voice interrupts gaily, and when you look over there’s a tiny and completely nude ball of fire behind and slightly to the left of you. “remember me?”

“heats flamesman,” Sans greets casually.

“Heats Flamesman,” Heats Flamesman replies.

“heats flamesman,” Sans intones seriously, winks at you.

“Heats Flamesman,” Heats Flamesman corrects, and you sigh and wander off since it doesn't seem like _that’s_ going to finish up anytime soon.

Grillby and Fuku are still supervising the table with monster drinks on it, and it’s a novelty to see those being served somewhere that isn’t Grillby’s (or Fuku’s, although you make yet another mental note to ask Sans to take you there sometime). You haven’t actually met Fuku yet, although in some ways you feel like you already know her...maybe just because you’ve heard so much about her? Although that doesn’t really explain why you feel like she reminds you of Shonda as you walk over.

Grillby looks up from arranging clean glasses in some kind of pattern as you walk over, and you get the strong impression he’s grinning.

… _Welcome to Hotland_ , he intones with a little flicker-giggle. _… Would you like a tour?_

You look around the massive, empty cavern and smile back at him ironically.

“I think I just took one,” you reply, and he giggles again, then indicates the green fire elemental next to him. It’s interesting, since Heats Flamesman (heats flamesman) is the same exact color as Grillby, and Fuku’s so strikingly different.

… _This is my daughter, Fuku._ You open your mouth to greet her, but he continues before you can. _… I’m_ _ **so glad**_ _you could join us for this very special occasion, since this is her first successful and_ _ **completely original recipe**_ _, and I’m certain you’ll want to try it, won’t you? Right away? Since I’ve never been more proud_ _in my entire life_ _??_

Before you know it there’s a glass of something purple in your hand, and you blink down at it warily.

Oh god.

Oh my god.

“This is _Papyrus_ , isn’t it,” you sort-of-ask slowly, even though you’re pretty sure you know the answer.

… _**Yes!!**_ Grillby gushes. _… I’ve already had several, and I must say I really approve._ _It only took ten years to perfect, and this particular perfection has perfectly provided a provident precedent!!_

You blink at him, then down at your glass again, give it a sniff. That is a very….complex….aroma.

Suddenly this party makes a lot more sense.

“Did you give this to the kids?” You ask hesitantly.

 _... Yes!!_ Grillby yells breathlessly. _…_ _If by kids you mean the two tiny human children you’ve brought so unexpectedly and delightfully into our lives by means of being related! To us!!_ _Can! You! imagine??_ _Fire elementals, r_ _elated to humans!!!_

O...kay. Apparently that’s a thing to have explained to you later. “Did….you ask Angie first?”

… _**YES!!!** Have I told you lately how beautiful your sister is? How have I not realized that humans have their charms, although **your** charms are certainly not without their charms, and…_

“I can’t actually deal with this at all,” you inform Grillby pleasantly, then turn on your heel and walk quickly back towards Sans with the glass in your hand. You can probably meet Fuku some other time, and Heats… well, they’re still repeating each other with a surprising amount of enthusiasm. You hand Sans your brimming glass with a sigh, and he winks at you before shoving it into his pocket for later.

You go back to the couch and sit, watching the not-chaos. In fact, it’s all very much in a regular pattern.

“HI!”

You look up at Undyne; she glances over a little shyly when you greet her, then tell her she looks nice. She wearing some kind of extremely tailored and vaguely old-fashioned-military styled jacket with red hot pants, and is carrying around a blunted fencing foil as well. The red’s the same as Alphys’s green-detailed ballgown, so you assume they go together somehow.

“We don’t really get to hang out much, right?” Undyne says, looking mildly discomfited. “We should, um. Fix that?? Sometime.”

You look up at her bluish, slightly awkward visage speculatively. Undyne’s a pretty physically dynamic person; she likes a lot of things with often destructive enthusiasm. You can definitely appreciate that, and you like the way she plays piano, especially when the piano survives. But neither you or she are the most natural conversationalists, and most of your interactions have been in fairly constrained contexts. So no… you don’t really get to hang out that much.

You realize she’s starting to sweat and look panicked under your extended scrutiny, so you decide to say something before she decides to throw you and/or the couch you’re sitting on to relieve the tension.

“Don’t mind me; I’m on drugs and you’re pretty,” you grin up at her with a wink, and she blushes but laughs raucously, seeming incongruously relieved by your flirting. You’re glad it came off friendly, rather than creepy. “I know what you mean, I’m just...” you frown a moment. “...a little more breakable than you’re used to, maybe?”

You give her another grin, and she returns it with a surprisingly soft look.

“I don’t really know how to relate to people I can’t throw. I mean-” She grimaces, and gets even more blue. Blushing? “It’s um. Just harder? Not impossible!! I’m-” her grin freezes, and a few more beads of sweat appear. “Um, did you know this is called, uh, Hotland?? It used to be a LOT hotter here!! I like it better this way, though.”

You watch Heats racing across the bare grey ground, defeating Shonda easily. Apparently Sans eventually said the magic words.

“Fireproof without being lousy with fire?” you ask with a raised brow.

Undyne throws her head back and laughs much louder than is warranted, but it seems to make her feel more comfortable. “YEP!!”

A familiar shuffling sounds behind you, and Undyne turns around.

“Saaaaaaaaaaaaaans,” she greets in super slow motion, then raises an eyebrow. “This might be your lowest effort yet.”

Sans’s sockets droop amiably as his skull comes into view over the back of the couch. “thanks. lookin pretty sharp yourself.”

“Do you throw Sans?” you ask curiously.

She blushes again as he chuckles, but answers easily enough. “Well, it’s not that I haven’t tried. He’s just… never where I thought he was when I try to grab him, but I probably just need glasses!! Weak eyesight’s NO WEAKNESS!!”

You notice her eyepatch again, and wonder if the issues with depth perception one-eyed humans experience also apply to monsters, or if Sans just doesn’t care for being thrown.

“TRUER WORDS,” Papyrus hollers as he approaches casually with a big platter.

“that a request?”

Papyrus blinks his sockets calmly at his brother, who bends over the back of the couch, then just...keeps going in a sort of somersault until he comes to rest in his usual slump, newly bare-skulled between you and Undyne. It kind of reminds you of the time you dropped a full basket of laundry down the stairs, just neater. After all, his slippers stay on, but his costume’s probably somewhere in the vicinity of under his butt now. His hands are still in his pockets, and he lets his sockets list as he watches the second heat of the racing.

“NO,” Papyrus answers blandly once his brother’s slo-mo stunt is complete.

The world’s tallest living skeleton locks his sockets on Undyne, and he shoves the platter of paper cutouts at her. “HAVE YOU TRIED THE BREAD? I PROMISE ALL THE GUTS HAVE BEEN REMOVED,” and she blushes again.

“He never lets you forget, does he?” she gripes at Sans as she selects something vaguely bread-shaped, but he just chuckles fondly and reaches up to grab one too.

“HAVE YOU JUDGED THE RESULTS OF THE BAKE-OFF YET?” Papyrus inquires politely as Sans slides the paper between his teeth. His eye lights dart furtively, and he shrugs a bit.

“’s a lotta pressure, bro. maybe someone else should, uh...”

“NONSENSE,” Papyrus corrects primly. “THE DISCERNMENT OF YOUR PALATE IS…VERY…UM…” He looks confused, then grins in relief. “DISCERNING!!”

“you shop em around yet?” Sans asks weakly.

“EH,” Papyrus equivocates, angling his sockets to the side.

He has. You had gotten a whiff and made it clear it was a hard pass.

“Hey Papyrus,” Undyne says in a conspiratorial tone. “Guess what?”

He tilts his head down at her suspiciously. “...WHAT?”

Her grin turns feral, then she bursts up and grabs him somehow, then hoists the world’s tallest living skeleton up onto her shoulders, her giant, scaly fists wrapped around his shiny-boot-clad ankles.

“CHICKEN BUTT!!” she shrieks, and runs headlong to join the racing. A few paper cutouts try to flutter off the platter, but he manages to catch them somehow as he corrects her primly.

“THESE ARE _DUCKS_ , UNDYNE,” he caws calmly as she waggles him back and forth slalom style between the next two racers, Endogeny and Gerson. You’re not sure if they’re racing or dancing, now that you get a better look. Maybe it doesn’t matter, but either way Gerson doesn’t seem to mind the, um. Frothing. It’s fairly copious.

“Did you know about Fuku’s new recipe?” you ask Sans in bemusement.

“nope,” he chuckles, sockets ovalling happily. “turns out it makes for a pretty good party, huh?”

You rub your hand across your eyes, shoulders shaking with helpless mirth. “I can’t believe Grillby managed to convince Ange the kids could drink. I mean, I know it’s not the same as human alcohol, but...wow.”

“think she dipped in first,” he adds with a wink, then his eye lights scan the cavern. “might jus’ be me an you holding out.”

“Not in the mood?” you ask softly, and you look at each other across the couch. Your face feels hot, and you can see his getting a little shiny. “I was thinking-”

Sans gives a little quack of surprise as he’s lifted by the skull; the duck’s apparently been dipping in too, and wants to show off its amazing talent of carrying people a few inches off the floor at about the same speed as an especially energetic snail.

“see ya in a few, darlin’,” Sans smiles amiably as he’s whisked off backwards at about 0.67 miles per hour, left ankle held at the same angle as his fused right to keep his slippers from sliding off. He zips his hoodie and stuffs his hands back in his pockets to stay aerodynamic. “’pparently i’m going on tour.”

This party sure is happening, isn’t it? You let out a slow breath; it’s soothing to have so much of everything back to normal. Not exactly everything, but almost everything. Your head’s starting to clear a bit, but you don’t want to stiffen up from sitting too long, so you stand up again and look for someone you haven’t talked to yet to see if that goes any better.

Sans has made it almost fifteen feet away by now, and you blow a kiss at him as you walk past to Alphys, several feet behind him and sipping moderately at a glass of purple.

You watch Alphys stare at Sans’s back, and if you didn’t know what you know, you’d never notice the conflict in her hooded gaze, or the tension in her rounded shoulders.

She’s thinking about The Stuff.

“Hey, Alphys,” you greet, and her expression clears completely to be replaced with her nervous-neutral one as she turns to face you. “How’s science?”

“Reassuringly b-boring,” she answers amiably, then sips her drink and lets her nictitating membranes do their thing. She’s once again just watching the roughhousing; you’ve never seen her join in at any point. Not even now, in the currently unusually boisterous atmosphere, although Alphys seems to be better at holding her Papyrus than the rest. It’s hard to imagine her being thrown, but obviously she and her wife relate just fine. Whenever Undyne’s not running around they’re usually all over each other.

“Does Undyne throw you?” you ask curiously.

Alphys gives you a look you probably should have predicted and snickers playfully. “Not in p-public. Ehheheheh...”

You sigh, shake your head with a fond smile. “So, I had this idea.”

She tilts her head at you, nods.

“I’m starting a seminar, or um…occasional class thingie? At the college. It’s about mediating cultural differences between humans and monsters, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to stop by sometime.”

“Hmm.” Her gaze turns hooded in thought for a long moment. “I d-d-don’t actually spend a lot of time w-with humans, other than you and F-f-frisk…. but I think I do okay, d-don’t you?”

Your mouth opens and stays there for a minute, then you shake your head in surprise. “No! I mean, I think you’re really good at explaining these things to people, a lot better than most monsters. Even though you’re not...well I don’t actually know if you’re a, um. Social scientist?”

“Eheheheh… n-no.” Alphys smiles, drinks. “I’m j-just really smart.” She doesn’t blush; Papyrus apparently really agrees with her. It’s nice. _She_ ’s nice, and pretty. “Sure, I’ll c-c-come and do a little lecture if you want m-me to.” Her protruding teeth clink gently on the rim of her glass, and the cavern’s directionless light make her large, thick-lined eyes seem like palely luminous jewels. Her claws have been painted a deep red to match her clothes, and they shine fetchingly against her now-empty glass. “That’s what you’re g-g-getting at, right? Or…?” Her red ballgown’s really showing her off, too, and she’s standing a bit straighter than usual.

She gives you another smile, a little more sultry this time.

“W- _wink_ ,” she says in her low, feminine voice.

This time you’re the one blushing and stuttering, and you stammer out some kind of excuse and go find your sister. Which is easy, since she’s back on the couch you’d vacated in the first place, and you pass Sans again as you go to join her. He’s made it a few more feet, although it looks like he’s having a nap now. You glance down; his slippers are still on, and when you look back up his socket cracks open just enough to wink at you, then slips shut again. The bird’s starting to look a little tired, but doesn’t seem like it’ll give up anytime soon.

You sigh and slump down next to your sister.

“Having fun?” you inquire.

“I think this is what happens when you go into a fairy ring,” she comments, frowning at whatever complicated activity’s happening amongst the roughhousers now. Papyrus gets suplexed by Undyne without dropping the platter or letting any of the paper cutouts fall off it, either. She’s not wrong, so you just shrug.

“Matt’s been sending me messages. Do you really think we’re all going to turn into monsters eventually?”

That questions rings a little different than it did before the end of the summer, but… the jury’s still out as far as your opinion’s concerned.

“Well, he’s right in the fact that I kind of don’t care,” you admit. “And you already ate the food, so you’re stuck here with the fae forever anyways, right? Might as well enjoy yourself and grow a few extra tails and heads.” You give her a gentle grin, but she returns it nervously.

You sigh. “Monsters don’t know what’s going to happen either, Ange.”

“It just feels like we’re dancing at the end of the world sometimes, doesn’t it?” she says quietly, voice almost slipping under the hubbub. Gerson found a hurdygurdy somewhere, and Papyrus finally stops insisting it’s too early for gyftmas music and just starts...dear god. He’s singing.

Yep, he’s holding a glass of...himself.

He is not a very good singer.

He is, however, a very loud singer, and that counts for a lot. Too bad Mettaton’s on a tour leg right now, he’d be living for this.

“What would you prefer to be doing at the end of the world, Ange? Because no one’s going to stop you here.” You smile gently, but she looks oddly shocked.

“It’s scary, Goob. Everything’s changing, and it’s… the earth, you know? What if gets...destroyed by magic?”

Yeesh. She really has been talking to Matt, hasn’t she.

We already destroyed the earth, Ange,” you say slow and gentle. “It already happened, and monsters had nothing to do with it.” You glance at her, and she looks thoughtful and expectant. Now that you didn’t expect, since she usually doesn’t talk about this sort of thing with you.

“A lot of people don’t know that, but only because they don’t _want_ to know. Anyone who could do something about it had been ignoring it for a hundred years, just watching thousands of people die because they didn’t give a shit and no one could force them to. It’s easier to pretend they died for no reason, or from...random chance, rather than believing they were murdered along with the planet. Storms from changes in the weather, plants and animals dying out, whole types of ecosystems gone forever. Replaced with stuff we don’t understand yet, and won’t for a long time. Do you….can you see what I mean? _It already happened._ We already didn’t know what was going to come out of this, if anything.”

You stare vaguely, thinking how to explain it. You can relate to Sans a lot at moments like these.

“The apocalypse _already happene_ _d_. But too many people only agree that it did if it already happened to them as individuals, and in a way they can understand. It’s frustrating because the vast majority of us had absolutely no say in it; we were victimized by this, too. You can’t just point a finger and say ‘oh, you did this to yourselves’ because _most of us didn’t_.”

You sigh in sorrow, in regret.

“Monsters _understand that_ , and they don’t even have to. They understand what most humans don’t, and they don’t blame us for being born into this situation unless we seem invested in maintaining it, or are willing to do violence to stop change from happening. But it’s not like monsters know what will happen either, and they have to live here, too.

“People like Matt aren’t...they don’t even know what they’re fighting. I guess in a way, that _is_ what they’re fighting-the unknown that will happen no matter what. They’re fighting their own fear, but they put real bodies under their fists so they feel like they’re accomplishing something. Like they’re winning. They can’t accept change, and they can’t move past the idea that it’s not fair, somehow; in general, or just to them personally. Maybe both, because why the fuck not, right?”

Angie looks a little sad, a little thoughtful, and a little happy as she watches her drunk children tear it up with monsters. Shonda stumbles wildly over a rock, and Papyrus rights her without looking, stopping singing, or letting go of his platter of paper. She barrels on, letting it all hang out and not even noticing or acknowledging she almost fell on her face.

“I’ve never felt like my kids were safer than they are right now,” you sister admits, shocking the shit out of you. “How fucked up is that?”

“It’s not fucked up at all, Ange,” you answer. “It’s...”

You realize something and exhale slowly.

“I owe you an apology,” you say in wonder.

She makes a buttface at you but it clears when she sees how serious you are.

“I really thought you doing the whole marriage-kids-house-blah blah whatever thing was like… because you wanted your life to be the way it was ‘supposed’ to be, or because… I don’t know. This idea of what ‘normal’ is, or what people like Matt think it is. It doesn’t matter because I know you could tell how I felt, because it hurt your feelings and messed up our relationship, and because I was wrong.”

She gapes at you.

“I took your life decisions personally for some ridiculous fucking reason. Probably because I was grieving and lonely, and college was literally killing me,” you grunt. “I took it as a...rejection. How stupid is that?”

She looks down, then back up at you with a soft smile. Her shoulders relax.

“It’s the kind of stupid only really smart people are,” she replies, and rubs your shoulder vigorously until you wince. “Sorry,” she adds with a shrug. “And I’m the kind of stupid only people who think they can control everything if they play by the rules are.” She glances up at the approach of Sans’s floating nap parade. “He’s been really good for you, you know that?”

You blush, and your mouth’s hanging open a little. “Howso?”

She gives you an incredulous look, like she wonders how you can even ask.

“He takes good care of you, and he loves you for the reasons you think you _should_ be,” she intones like she’s a fucking psychic or something. “I don’t know why I didn’t wear a costume,” she adds with a strange inflection, almost like she’s offended by her own reticence. “I’m such a fucking stick in the mud.” Apparently that’s exactly what she is. Alrighty then.

She leaves you dumbfounded and silent, sitting like a duck as she swans off towards the table for another glass. Speaking of which, the one carrying Sans around finally deposits him back in front of the couch. His sockets open calmly as he feels the ground return under his slippers.

“This is officially the weirdest party Papyrus has ever thrown,” you observe calmly. “Probably because everyone’s him.”

“not bad though, right?”

“Not at all,” you smile, “but I guess… I don’t know.” He looks down at you softly, and you feel a quivery little pang happen somewhere between your vital organs. “Did you judge the bad cookie challenge yet?” you ask to cover it up, quirking an eyebrow.

“nope. you see the painting yet?”

“Nope,” you grin.“I don’t know why, but I’m just not really feeling it tonight. I’m not tired, and I’m not in pain anymore...but...” Yeah. It’s a thing.

You look up at him and finally just let your face get as hot as it wants to, and the look he gives in return is just as heated.

“I’d rather go somewhere with you,” you say, realizing how true it is in the middle of saying it.

A little ghost of cyan, a tinge of yellow comes into his face. “’m guessin you mean it like i would, huh?”

You smile around at everyone having a perfectly acceptable and extremely raucous good time, needing neither your supervision nor your participation.

“I do,” you answer, wiggling your eyebrows.

Sans grins at you, and you grin right back.

“wanna duck out with me?”

“Yeah,” you giggle, then glance furtively at your sister and the kids. “But...”

“there’s hole up right near here by undyne’s house, and my brother’s got his car there. he can take em home later, or they can stay over at al’s,” he suggests, hand in his pocket as he looks at you sidelong. “they’re safe n sound as they can be at the end a the world,” he adds reasonably enough.

He’s right, and you nod eagerly.

He rummages in his pockets to send a message, then offers you his bare fingerbones with a wink. You shut your eyes, and when you open them you both flop back onto the bed with a grunt, then wiggle right into each other’s arms eagerly.

“have i told you lately i love how you always know exactly when to change the mood?” he rumbles in your ear suggestively, clever phalanges already unbuttoning your onesie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Chapter 50!! This particular angst slog is finally in the books; prepare for Fluffersmutter and Plot.  
> This party was probably a little Much but I really needed an excuse to write crack and draw Papyrus in his lovingly preserved Battle Body.
> 
> https://www.deviantart.com/gildedpleasure/art/Costume-Party-At-The-End-Of-The-World-794446061


	51. the same page

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Mitski - I Will](https://youtu.be/ODPra5VxNLI)

“doesn’t feel like anything else when you do that,” Sans whispers against your face, breath catching in a little hiccup as his smooth fingertips soothe the back of your neck. “never felt anything like it in my life.”

You lie in his bed curved in facing each other like commas, touching each other gently and talking quietly. You’ve got your hand pressed to his chest, reveling in the return of whatever it is you feel here when you’re both in the kind of mood you’re in right now. The wad of your discarded pajama onesie makes a nice lumbar support as you lounge in t-shirt and boxers. You touch his socked footbones gently with the tops of your bare feet, giving you both a nice little shiver.

“Hmmm…?” you smile soft and vague. “I thought it felt the same as when anyone touches you here, as long as you...want them to? I thought that was what you said the first time I touched you here like this.”

He shakes his head, and his hands leave you but only so they can creep up inside your shirt instead of outside. “said _i_ don’t feel any different bout it. said: ‘i’d usually be anticipating the possibility, feeling trust. i know you can’t, but i don’t feel any different about this.’”

“Is that an exact quote?” you ask impishly.

He just nods, sockets flat on the bottom. His hard, flexible hands are cool-neutral under your shirt, caressing so slowly it’s like they’re discovering what skin feels like. He always touches you like it’s the first time: patient, curious, excited.

“You don’t feel like anything else to me, either,” you reply softly, stroking at his sternum, teasing at his cloth-covered intercostal spaces. “I’ve always felt that way. Even before we ever saw each other, before we touched like this. I always knew it was _you_ , and I could never mistake you for anyone or anything else.” You look down at where you touch him instead of his face, blushing a little. “The first time you ever made me come, the way your fingers felt reminded me of when I touched your soul, and...that’s what I was thinking of when it happened. Did I ever tell you that?”

He shakes his head silently, but magic beads up in the corner of his socket as you glance up, and he tucks a fist in his sleeve to wipe it away. His arms slither all the way around you to pull you closer, he looks into your eyes and throws a femur up over your leg; takes a deep, uneven breath.

“didn’t say anything then, cause i know some stuff’s hard for you,” he whispers as you feel his ribs gentle and slow, run the hot pad of your middle finger along his clavicle. “you touch how humans like to, but you do it like a monster would.”

“What does that mean to you?” you ask as he tucks his face under yours, hides in your neck.

“like you love me.” His voice wavers quietly, thick with emotion. “’cept different, because you...have to do it on purpose. isn’t jus’ in there already, you gotta _do_ it. learn how.” He sniffs a little, but it doesn’t seem bad. “you show me how to do it too, and… makes me… feels like…” He shivers in your arms as his voice drifts away.

“can’t explain it,” he whispers. “jus’ feel it.”

“I missed you so much.” You touch a wet eye to his skull. “I love you, okay?”

“love you too,” he moans and moves against your hand, causing one of your fingers to push cloth between two ribs. “’m real glad it feels good again,” he adds, voice thick with emotion. A phalanx brushes the back of your neck lightly as he rolls his face against yours, giving you gooseflesh along your arm and side. “...mmm. feels better than ever.”

You push your arm underneath him to pull him even closer, and glide your hand up and down his sternum. “I still don’t know why it feels so good,” you whisper heatedly, kiss his maxilla gently. “It’s like I can...feel you want something?”

“yeah,” he whispers, pushing against you fervently; it’s like the way he feels swells up under your hand. “maybe s’cause i do?” He makes a soft little noise through his nasal cavity. “want you _so much_ … want you to-”

He gasps and shivers, then leans his head back as his teeth part to show the uneven space between, the crooked lower teeth. Your hand stills as smooth phalanges touch the back of it; his eye lights shrink and quiver as he caresses the back of your hand lightly, then his eyes come up to meet yours. He looks dumbfounded.

“dunno how, but…” he pants quietly, “it doesn’t feel the same, but… you’re calling me.” He presses the back of your hand gently with a slow, uneven exhale. “you’re _calling_ me.”

He has indeed told you all the sexy talk, the words for things people do with each other sometimes. Even the ones you can’t do, like making his soul come out. To call a soul, then expose or ‘pull’ it; ‘tug’ it if you’re feeling especially playful or bawdy. He’s done it to you plenty of times, and there are...levels. The longer he does it, the sexier it feels.

“I thought humans can’t do that,” you whisper in shock.

“they can’t...” Tears slide down the grooves under his sockets, and he shuts them shyly. “not to monsters… or humans, either,” he whispers. “guess i still don’t really know what i am.”

Oh geez. “Do you want me to stop?”

“no,” he sobs softly, and he slides his hand back up your shirt with a tight sigh. “you feel it too? you’re askin me if i wanna come out and feel good right now, and i’m answering.” You look at where your hand traces his sternum as he lets out another soft moan. His hands glide up and down your back under your shirt, and you take a deep breath, let it out.

“I can feel it,” you say, softly astonished. “I feel you in there, and I always have. Even the first time I ever touched you like this, when you said it felt this way even though I couldn’t make you come out.”

He makes a tiny noise, caresses you encouragingly. “if i hadn’t said that… maybe something else might’ve happened. but now we know i’m not...not like other monsters, i guess. you said there’s a question you don’t know how ta ask, you remember that?”

“Yeah.”

His arms slide around your waist and his eyes open a little. The translucently fuzzy points inside nearly fill the space in his sockets.

“wanna ask me if i’ll come out for you? see what happens?”

You nod fervently, and his breath catches in anticipation.

“go ‘head.” Magic beads again at the inner rim of his socket, he shudders and moans as you kiss at away.

You slide your arm under his shoulders, lean forward while still making sure not to crowd him, anticipation and excitement blooming on your tongue like sugar. You explore his sternum delicately with hot, fleshy fingers, watch his expression go breathless and dreamy as he gazes at you. His sockets grow pained as his longing increases, and you feel his excitement under your hand, like you’re holding it in the air over something hot without actually feeling heat.

“That’s you,” you whisper in amazement. “I feel how much you want to come out, and I want you to... so much.”

His fingers squeeze your flesh lightly, then release. He keeps massaging at you and tracing little words of encouragement on your skin, starting to make his idle, aimless movements of arousal as you continue. You think about how much you want to see him, and you can feel him surge deliciously under your fingers again in response. It’s like something drawing and pushing at the same time, and his body starts to echo that kind of feeling, quivering up like waves from his deepest being under your fingers.

“it feels so good,” he sighs up at you helplessly, face soft and open, voice slow and thick with desire. He’s rubbing the heel of his left foot against the bed over and over, bunching up the blankets and squeezing you with his arms. “like i can’t wait and i don’t want you to ever stop…all at the same time,” he whispers plaintively, then rolls his forehead against your upper arm with a cracked little exhale.

“How do I ask you to come out?” You’re still not entirely sure what’s happening or why you can do this at all. You’re not convinced anything will actually happen if you try, but you can’t deny the reality under your touch.

“jus’ like you’re doing,” he pants softly, then makes another soft noise. “feel that?” You do. “s’like that cause you already got me there,” he says, then takes a second to catch his breath, fingers caressing your hip encouragingly. “got me ready. then, when _you’re_ ready-” His hard, flexible fingers slip over top yours and he makes the gesture he uses to mean… this, you realize. Exactly this.

His hand goes back to your body, and he moans quietly as your hand slides over his sternum light and gentle, shivers deep when your fingertip brushes the spots his ribs join it. You really concentrate on what you’re feeling, both in yourself and under your hand. It’s been so long since you’ve seen him, and you want this...so much. You want to know him, and be with him, and revel in everything he wants to share with you. His chest hitches under your hand; he’s making tiny vocalizations with every breath he takes now. He wants to come out for you, he wants to feel good with you, to touch and be touched.

You want that too, so you draw your fingers back back with the same sort of motion he uses. It’s like the first time you ever saw him all over again, but his defenseless, shaky cry is like nothing you’ve heard before. You make an odd little noise as a glowing white shape follows your fingertips, hovers inches away. A heart with the point up, the two curves below meeting like a perfect cupid’s bow. It seems almost frail, with a faint iridescence that reminds you of the way the surface of his face looks when he’s having especially strong emotions.

His soul is so ethereal, and still more _real_ than anything else here at the same time. Your fingers hovering near it are lit by and enhance its luster. The curve of your hand, achingly protective and positioned like you’re presenting it to both of you at the same time makes you bite your lip to stifle a noise. The sight twists your insides strangely, and you try to remember how to breathe.

He’s staring into himself too, utterly transfixed as one of his hands leaves your body, and a silver-gilt phalanx curves right in as he moans with longing. He shuts his sockets and sobs a time or two. “never felt anything like that in _my life_ ,” he breathes softly, rolls his face back into your upper arm. You feel the tingle of his magic there as you caress him soothingly.

“Are you okay?” you whisper, rubbing his shoulderblade with your wrist through his soft, threadbare shirt.

“better than okay,” he hiccups, then looks back into himself, touches deeper as his other arm tightens around you again. “want you to touch me,” he whispers. He tears his gaze away from himself to look into your eyes with a breathlessly vulnerable expression, and your eyes fill as you hear his soft, secret clacking quiver up from deep inside his body. It feels like so long since you’ve heard him like this, had him in your arms, sweet and ready. “you… still want to?”

“Yes,” you reply simply, and his fingers leave his soul to reach for yours, twine them together. His other hand tightens on your hip, and he pushes your joined touch into his soul with another shaky cry. Your voice adds itself to his as he lets you know in a rush: he’s never felt anything like this, never imagined. He moans softly; the moment you’d pulled him was like every moment you’ve folded up right into each others’ arms with a satisfied sigh stacked up on top of each other, everything fitting perfect and then just...floating up right out of himself, absolutely safe and completely exposed at the same time. A sense of broadened dimensions, like he has more space inside him because you’re touching him, like your presence strengthens and bolsters him. Nurtures, nourishes, and makes him quake with desire: he wants to make you feel just as good as you make him feel.

“I want you to do me too,” you whisper. You know the lightest tinge of nervousness. “I trust you,” you add, then make him feel it. He shudders and sighs with your reassurance; joy floods him and soothes out the worry of having your souls out at the same time, even though it’s been so long for a reason.

Trust.

Faith.

His hand slides out of your shirt and glides glassy-smooth over the cotton outside, up over your flesh-clothed sternum. The fact that you’re already touching him adds another layer to what you feel as he calls and gathers your essential being to come out and feel good with him. It’s incredible to feel yourself gather up quivering under his touch, then it’s even better than that but you’re both so eager it doesn’t take long before he pulls. Dark blue joins iridescent white to combine into the light and not-light that can only be seen with the two of you together like this. You stay like that, breathing raggedly together for a long, lingering time; it already feels so good. He pulls your joined fingers out of his soul for a moment, cupping both and coaxing them closer carefully with a quiet little sound of pleasure.

“looks like we want the same thing,” he whispers, gaze locked on your exposed selves. “i know you can’t see it, but it still feels good when i show you.” His eye lights lift to your face. “want it how we both like it? all together?”

You nod fervently and let love and trust bloom; you give him your fingers to wind into the bone net of his hands; phalanges and metacarpals bending and spreading in ways human fingers can’t. He wraps his legs around to pull you closer; you both shut your eyes and touch faces together for a few minutes, breathing through anxiety, yearning, trust, and a tinge of pain. You’re both a little afraid, but you feel safe, feel trust. You’re picking up where you left off, and there’s a sense of balance to it.

“all at once?” he pants softly, and you sob agreement. “okay,” he sighs, and you both slip right into each other, swooning and moaning in unison. It’s not too much, and nothing’s out of place. Everything’s where it’s supposed to be, and you’re both doing exactly what you want to be doing. It’s the simmering moment you’d both been imagining each time your eyes had met all night; you’re where you had wished you’d been all along.

Your breathing falls into sync as you both revel in the experience of each other, weeping softly when it gets intense, smiling and touching faces together when you glide over favorite ideas and sensations. You’re vaguely aware of bodies getting closer and closer, until the space left between you is barely enough for hands and souls.

You walk through the endless house of each other, open doors and ascend staircases you’ve built for access. It’s beautiful and expansive, but eventually you start seeing the cracks in the molding, feeling the creaks of warped floorboards. Cobwebs mass dark and lonely in the corners, terrified of abandonments that happened a long time ago.

Stuck.

You both weep quietly when you see the heavy weight that had crashed unexpectedly right through the roof, tore a big gully down the middle. It’s shored up stable, but the wound’s still fresh.

You smell the fresh-cut wood of hope, but-

There’s a closed door that quivers, haunted. Cries of pain and pleasure lurk behind it, but the door stills as you both watch, holding each other close and careful. There’s a door behind you, too, and the cries behind it are familiar, aren’t they? Almost comforting sometimes, but they carve you up so sharp you don’t notice til later at others. There are ghosts in here, but they _belong_ to both of you and you’re used to them. As long as the house stands strong, they don’t have to be dangerous.

But this house needs some work, doesn’t it?

You whimper as insecurity flakes paint from the walls, turning them toxic.

You’re oblivious to things that are important to him so often, and you don’t understand so many of his relationships. You know _you’re_ important to him but not exactly how, and it eats at you sometimes.

You can’t see how he feels when he shows you his soul, and you don’t have any magic to push inside. You’re always inventing new ways to give yourselves to each other, but some things won’t ever be possible. You’re too different.

Wood warps and bends; he’s going to get tired of you once the novelty wears off, once he realizes you can’t give him the things he wants.

He mewls quietly as your pain scores him deep, and a bead of magic wells up in the corner of his socket. He takes a deep breath, lets it out evenly.

He doesn’t want _things_ , he wants _you_. The rush of his adamance makes you shake; an impression of timeless loyalty makes you exhale in awe. You don’t know what kind of feeling this is, but it’s definitely directed towards you. It wraps you up tight and protective, holds you away from yourself a little, pushes _between_.

He huffs softly against your face and it firms even more: don’t you understand? He more-than-knows how you feel: he _feels_ how you feel.

He lets out a sob as water pours from cracked pipes, damaging the foundation.

You do things he doesn’t understand, _need_ things he has no way to know about and can’t wrap his mind around, no matter how hard he tries. He doesn’t know if they’re human things, or just you things. There’s so much he can’t give you either. Parts he just doesn’t have: warmth and heartbeat, hair and skin, lips and tongue.

He weeps slow and bitter now; the basement floods and mold creeps up neglected walls.

He can’t kiss you back on your mouth or your body. He can’t make you feel good with it like you do for him, not _for real_. Can’t give you softness to hold and cuddle, only hard bones. Can’t even open his ugly mouth.

A rush of pain from you makes him gasp; you love his face. The way he feels about it...hurts you.

You touch each other carefully and share the feeling, weep and rub your faces together as you let the pain of it ring high between you, then shudder together as you turn your face with intent. You let him feel the rush when you press lips to his fixed grin, and you feel his burst of pleasure at soft lips against sensitive teeth, feel air sucked in through his nasal cavity. Your shared breaths blow clean through the humid stagnation, freshening the atmosphere. He parts his teeth hesitantly, then moans aloud at the way it makes you feel when he lets you in.

Ohhh...wow. He didn’t know it felt like this to you; what you meant by _private_. You give him even more: shivery and oddly...penetrative, he’s letting you _inside_. It’s little like how he feels when you push your tongue into the spot where his jaw’s fused, complex and not-quite-transgressive; you feel like he’s accepting you somewhere no one else gets to go.

He pulls back at that, looks soft and long into both of you. This is one of those things, not sure if it’s a human thing or a you thing; he’s deciding it probably doesn’t matter. He doesn’t really understand, and he didn’t know you wanted that, but… there are _so many things_ he’s only ever shared with you, don’t you realize? Don’t you...

He pulls his fingers out of his soul, lets out a deep, breathy groan as your touch spreads raw and wild without his steadying presence. He runs phalanges along your arm, over your shoulder and up to your face, tilts up your chin so you meet his eyes. Doors swing wide and windows fly open; fresh air blows right through him, makes him shiver. This is the house you and he have built together, and you’re the only ones who can come here. He pants raggedly through parted teeth: there’s no part of him you can’t touch, nowhere in here you’re barred from. You have _everything he is_ right here in your hand, and that’s right where he wants to be. He wants you to _understand_.

You groan softly as his eyes expand, quivering and strong at once. You know that if you want to, you can know exactly how he feels about Grillby, and know what they’ve done together. Doggo, Lola… and Alphys too, apparently. Even some of what he’s done himself, how he felt about it. His fingers stroke your cheek gently; he wants to give you who he is to others, give you _who he is to himself_. You know where it is, and why it’s there.

He knows how you are, and that right now might extend into the past and the future for you.

He knows you might even have already _checked_ , so you know it already.

These are places inside him: kitchens and bedrooms, attics and balconies.

Different and no different from his brother’s mazelike suite with its secrets and puzzles, convoluted rules and trap doors that put you right back to the beginning. Frisk’s attic with its doors that lead to nothing, comfortable couches that look just like the ones that swallow you whole, never to be seen again.

His sockets narrow against rush of pain and regret, but he doesn’t hesitate.

Toriel’s room that ends halfway up the wall, bare beams reaching up like bone fingers clawing into a howling blizzard above, ready to freeze the cowardly to dust. A heavy double door is suspended in the nonexistent ceiling that he never was brave enough to open; he just slipped tiny bits and slivers through the cracks, knowing the whole time it wasn’t nearly _enough_.

He weeps against your face softly, ashamed.

You spread your fingers wide, soothing and comforting. You show him the mirror in yourself, all doors you were too afraid to open, additions you felt like you couldn’t afford. Rusted fixtures you were too miserly to replace, entire wings you could have built and kept walled off instead, grew cramped and lonely within your own fears and insecurities. Pushing people away before they figured out you’re not all that special, getting rid of everything before you have a chance to have it torn away from you.

Then Sans came with his magic portals and convenient shortcuts literal and metaphorical, his knack for making room and creating space. A window appeared, let some light into the bitter little hovel you’d made of yourself. He showed you the way through him and into other places you never expected to go, then he followed you even further. You keep exploring together, opening the rooms that lead to even more wings; his relationships become yours, too.

He wants you to know you did the same for him. Another family found by a skeleton orphaned by time and space; another layer of seeing-and-seen wrapped around him, protective and warm. Makes him feel cared for, feel important. He wants to take care of all of you, but especially… especially _you_. He loves you _so much_ , don’t you know that?

His sockets change shape, then close as he weeps with how massively present you are inside him. He pants softly as his teeth part; he wants you to know what draws him to you like no one else.

Integrity. The kind of integrity you can’t say no to, and he doesn’t want to.

He knows you live _alongside_ _time_ , and he was never hiding _any of_ _th_ _is_ from you. He wants to share everything he is, however you want to take it. It makes it so good to give in, to know what he gives you is okay because it was _already yours_. A timeless fatalism that’s more optimistic than he can manage on his own. That might be why you’re still here with him, because something inside you already knew this was here.

A lot of people might have run away. He’s the kind of person who would; he thanks his lucky stars you’re braver than he is. Handsome and wise; courageous and strong.

You have his attention and interest, his devotion and his support. He gives you his magic: patient and peaceful; his soul: complex and exciting; his body: tender and brittle.

His breath hitches and he moans aloud; you can know what he feels when you love him with your body, too. Even _just_ bodies, the times when you didn’t touch his soul. He opens his eyes and smiles at you as magic streams from his sockets, soft with trust and simple joy.

The soul in your hand is strengthened by patience and justice, held together by love, hope and compassion at his core. Part of a web of relationships, embedded and inextricable from all of them.

He’s insecure too, he worries he can’t give you things you might want. He doesn’t know if you’ll still love him if you look inside, but he shares himself anyways. You help him be brave enough for this, you make him...better than he thought he could be. He pants for breath as he softens even more, opens himself for you ragged and complete.

He won’t even _know_ if you look or not, but you’ve already been in rooms he doesn’t go to… you’ve been in rooms he _can’t_ go to.

That’s trust, right?

That’s _love_.

Love gets bigger when you share it, and he can’t exist without it. That doesn’t make things easy for him, but… it’s who he is, it’s _what_ he is. He can’t not know this about himself, and he lets you know it, too. His fingers slide back into his soul, and he exhales soft as it soothes and pleasures him. He fills you both with an indescribably poignant rush of love; the kind he _is_ , and the kind you’ve made together.

His sockets narrow and quiver, grow pained as his vulnerability yawns. A sob breaks his voice in half; he’s afraid, and he loves you so much.

Do you love him?

God, you _do_ ; you let him know and then you make him feel it as hard as you can, both torn and healed by his quivering cry as the rush fills him. You really, _really_ love him, so much it makes you afraid too, makes you do stupid things sometimes. You show him how much it hurts to _have something_ , because so many things have been taken from you. You hold too tight, or not tight enough, you fumble and falter and get clumsy and sad and mess things up, but you _love him_. Making problems for yourself like always, but… you never knew you could feel like this about anyone. You missed him so much, missed this. He did too; a soft whine escapes him as yearning floods through his soul. Even the pain shared heals you both, strengthens what you’re building. This is so good, and he wants more. He wants you so much, he wants himself, he wants…

He leans back and looks into your eyes, pips in his sockets quivering-soft as tears flow heedless across his face.

There’s another thing he’s only ever shared with you; it’s _his_. Selfish; he’d kept it for himself, never _wanted_ to share it. Until you showed him how to feel things he didn’t know he could, made his soul and his body feel so much he never thought he could hold it all. He thought it could break him, but he didn’t care...then he realized he didn’t have to break, and that he _needs to care_. So he just got bigger and bigger inside until he overflowed into you, and you showed him how sharing it makes it feel even better. He made you want to share _himself_.

Will you share his magic with him? He wants to feel that way with you, feel soothed and happy, feel so good he can hardly believe it. He wants to know the way you feel when he pushes his body into your soul. A rush of desperate yearning saturates you hard enough that he moans with it, but the tinge of reticence makes less sense to him. You blush a little; you just don’t want it to be over yet.

A soft little bloom of confusion fades into understanding and reassurance. He gets a little iridescent, because Sans pushes unusually late a lot of the time. Most monsters do it towards the beginning: feel something good and push it in there, then touch and look at each other as long as it lasts. He lets you know: most monsters don’t push at the end like he does, and the rush when you put your soul back happens every time you do it until it’s not full anymore, too. He smiles soft and shameless because just like everything else, Sans likes to wait, take his time, draw it out as long as possible.

Right up until he doesn’t.

And sometimes he pushes at the end because he can’t let go. Sometimes he holds on to things whether they’re good or bad for him, but this is something good. He knows it’s good, and he’d feel it all the time if he could. He wasn’t kidding when he’d told you he almost always has a little of his own magic in his soul, and he knew exactly what you’d meant the first time he’d let you feel it too. That you’d do it all the time if you could, and he does.

You touch each other, feeling and knowing softer and more vague until most of what you exchange are fat, lush waves of good feelings that keep getting better and better: closeness, sharing, love, desire and pleasure.

Eventually he pauses, suggests hesitantly that you let him touch alone for a moment because he wants to give you something complicated, something personal and special. Something he’s never shared with anyone; something _private_. Something that’s _his_. His soul is strong but not as strong as yours, and when he touches alone he can give you more.

You slide out and rest your fingers on his forearm as he fills you, more and more as you concentrate, still touching him until he’s all you feel, all you know. You’re dazed with it, eyelids fluttering faintly as he opens your essential self with skillful intent and curved bone.

He breathes slow and ragged, sockets narrowing to slits as he floods you with awareness of his body and soul, his magic and his mind.

You shiver and grunt together as he gives you a second possibility: all of that slightly to the left from where it is. Where he… _also_ is.

Then...it happens again. He hesitates, makes sure you like it. You do, and it happens again.

Again.

Again.

 _Between_ each instance there’s another, and another, and the more you see the more there is. It doesn’t end, because _he_ doesn’t end. He’s everywhere both temporally and spatially, and this is something he feels and is aware of every moment, just like his arms and legs, just like his mind, body, soul. His possible self flows away from the center, each movement, thought, and moment multiplying exponentially like a fractal exploding softly outward from where he exists now, to where he could potentially exist… everywhere, fainter the farther he goes but still _there_.

It’s…

You’re vaguely aware of yourself, panting and weeping with this. You want him to know; this feels like…

_You._

It feels like flowering-outward-midnight-blue, connections of thoughts to other thoughts with what’s reminding you at the center: a catalyst. The deep-woven associations of images, symbols, feeling, memories...potential in thought to match his potential in body. The thought _is_ the experience, rich with sensory information and intensely spatial. You can give him this even touching along with him because you’re soul’s so strong, and the feeling’s so strikingly, surprisingly _similar_.

Your faces rub hard to savor the textural differences as you breathe roughly into each other, fingers dancing inside to weave together what you feel and think, blending the responses. You feel a bone fingertip brush yours inside him, and you both shiver up tight with high, surprised moans.

The catalytic input, electric recognition: **Oh.**

You sigh it out together, let the patterns relax and unfold. Sans feels himself, all one self until he needs to be a different one, and so he becomes what he already is. He feels his potential spiraling outward, zeroes in on one aspect. A zero _and_ a one craving wholeness, a singularity of self among multitudes.

Then…

He _slides right in_.

He _becomes_.

You make throaty noises and lurch gently into each other slow and dazed; you slide your fingers back into yourself to connect with and bounce off the moment he just gave you. You inundate him with the spiral of facts and feelings, conclusions and decisions: sorting, searching, selecting. Your awareness races along each instance, every little spark of insight a crackling thrill until you find it. He’s moaning with anticipation as it gets closer, then you do. You _find_ it.

The most important thing out of all of them: This One. It has infinite also-this-sometimes-that attached, a sparkling trail of endlessly divisible associations that can mean something a little different to anyone who might experience them. It can be looked at from any direction, it transforms itself with context and application.

You pull back and show him the whole; he gasps and writhes against you.

Everything _fits together_ , and you slide it right in.

It _becomes_.

_**Oh.** _

You pull back even more; it gets bigger. You check in with him: he _loves_ this. He loves it, and he wants even more.

You show him that every single piece is a decision.

A judgement after deliberation and weighing in, checking to see which one is the right one. Every. Single. Time. You go back to the beginning, run through everything again. Check and adjust, decide all over. Fix mistakes, get closer to the right thing, the perfect truth.

His voice chases his panting breath with every exhale; he wants to push this.

You’ve never been more ready for anything in your life.

You feel another rush of his infinite self, every possible thought, movement, and action happening everywhere and everywhen except _all at the same time_. You share another flash of the _wholeness_ , the infinitely changeable and divisible web of decisions you’ve made, and are still making.

You realize what you share, what you get from each other that’s utterly unique. You inspire him, he inspires you. There’s something you _create_ together like this, and it looks like each of you. It was something you shared before you shared it with each other, something you have in common.

When you touch like this… you can _experience_ it.

It rushes into Sans so expansive it pushes a slow, deep cry from him, and he presses a newly generative heat between his legs against you helplessly as he gasps in anticipation. Bone fingers penetrate purposefully and spread wide: here it comes. He growls low and rough at first, shares just how good it feels for him to push his magic out this way, not just into himself but you at the same time. He gives you a little taste of the way this isn’t like shed magic, although that feels good too. This is a _decision_ , just like the ones you showed him: the way this magic becomes not-him inside you is thick and heavy, ripe with his intent. His voice softens out clear and smooth as you’re flooded with his indescribable peace together, both of you weaving this time to give and take, to share and soothe.

His magic wraps you both taut as his legs pull you close, closer, closest: an endless tapestry that surrounds infinite selves and their infinite permutations, mingles their similarities and kisses their differences, then plunges each so deep into the other it presses an image just like wet dye flooding across batik cloth. You both gasp and shiver under incredibly comforting pressure that could crush and doesn’t even come close, then shudder up dripping to reveal the sensation of each others’ overlapped and infinitely divisible potential. The pattern of shared potentiality pressed reverse-resistant through every thread in the shapes where you align and diverge, each a universe within itself.

It’s a rush of _him:_ soothing and calm, patient and balanced.

Everything’s going to be okay.

Look at you both, so different, so similar. So…

Compatible,

locked together like

soft skin and hard bone, like you’re both, you’re both finally

On the same.

Page.

This is his incorruptible body pouring into the seething ocean of him, the boiling sky of you, slipping silver-white horizon between you both to harmonize your edges. Nothing pure about him, just him doing his best by you and himself, giving you everything he’s got without reservation: love, hope, compassion. His breath hitches repeatedly as he fills up, can’t believe how good it feels, can’t believe how amazing it is to fill you up like this, floating both of you safe to shore in his trembling bliss. He wants to keep going forever, and it’s time to stop now.

His skull rolls limp, eye sockets texture-filled slits; he finishes with a hiccuping sigh. He moans soft and satisfied as he fingers you both delicately where you’re stuffed roiling-full of him, the heat in his pelvis increasing as he nudges gently against your leg again.

You keep agitating his pushed magic around with your touches, letting the love-hope-compassion swirl between you in a heady flood. You realize those things are also part of his body, somehow… they’re _physica_ _l_. To be part of him they can’t not be, and that’s what his magic puts inside you. His impossibly metaphysical body floods into spaces between your atoms; they dance with the energies that makes particles move, the pieces held close and shoved apart by forces so infinitely divisible they disappear past the vanishing point of the biologically explicable: _alive_.

He’s made of **magic** : a substance and an idea at the same time. The absolute _certainty_ of love; that’s what he makes you feel. Like it can’t go anywhere, and it’ll always be there when you need it, tender and strong. This way of loving invents itself inside both of you, a way to make the intangible manifest. Tiny bone fingertips trace the pattern of what you’ve shared inside you, swirling his magic to illuminate part of it as you shiver and sigh.

That’s what he’d meant before. You teach him how to love on purpose, in a way that’s physical and more than that at the same time. Love as a temporal process rather than a spatial substance. A way to _make_ love together, when he can’t remember how to on his own. When his body doesn’t create it, when his soul forgets, when the space where there’s nothing eats it all up and leaves him empty. And it’s not like _you_ knew how either; you and he had had to learn together, and you're still learning and teaching, striving and realizing. It doesn’t ever end.

He never knew you could _decide_ love, because monsters just...are. Their love is inherent, but he’s not like other monsters. He doesn’t know if it’s because of whatever a skeleton is, or the condition he was born with, or because of what his life has made of him: a slightly damaged ocean of complexity with an aching abyss tucked deep inside. Maybe his way of being isn’t quite as wrong as he thought for so long; maybe he just needed to learn how to keep love alive in his fragile, inverted heart in his own way.

And just as certain as you’re on the same page, you both realize it’s enough for now, because now isn’t ending anytime soon.

Now is as infinite as you both want it to be, and you can stay here forever if you like.

That’s what you give him. You let him set down time and walk away, existing in this moment as long as he needs, a moment where only good things are real because there’s no room for anything else. When so much of his life has been stuffed sickened-full of times: bad ones, pointless ones, empty ones, and even good ones… your love eats time and then _transcends_ it, and he’s never felt more free.

Free like falling into the spaces between stars; the black space in the center of your eyes like a photo negative of his own, the strange portals that open wide when he gets close.

_So close._

His heated breath gushes out against your face, and you suck it in greedily as you remove the space between your bodies instead of moving souls apart. Flesh-clothed fingers and bare phalanges put your selves back where they go. Another circular breath is shared between you as the glow disappears, and you tangle your limbs together, moaning and touching, caressing and holding each other as close as you can, wherever it feels good, better, best.

You trace the patterns left inside you over and over, moaning where they overlap, shivering with delight when they diverge. You look so different, but the shape of your _process_ is the same: learning to love together, doing… whatever it is that makes these shapes you can’t stop feeling and following over and over. You go deeper and there’s always more, each echo smaller and more intricate; you pull back wide and it multiplies endlessly outward. His face and pelvis feel hot against you, his chest thrums with a seething rush of love.

“what _was_ that?” you gush breathlessly as soon as you can manage it.

“ _shortcut_ ,” he pants hot in your ear. “wh-, what was-”

“Writing,” you moan high and soft.


	52. metaphysical proximity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...h-here it is...  
> m-my favorite chapter
> 
> Stone Temple Pilots - Still Remains  
> https://youtu.be/nsCGdFnyabw

After a long time of moaning and touching each other, he tilts his head back to look at you.

“will you take my clothes off?” He glances down shyly, then it melts out into a grin as he looks back up at you, touches his nasal bone to your cheek gently. “want you to see me,” he adds.

You look down at his shorts, and he nods when you look back at his face. “think it’s happening, or...might happen? don’t know what it’s gonna look like if it does, but i want you to see me anyways. ‘m not scared to look, either.”

You help each other sit up, and his face lolls into your neck with a heavy sigh as you push his sweatshirt off his shoulders and down his arms. He leans back to let you pull his shirt up and off, your fingers running stiffened up the back to make sure it doesn’t catch on his processes. Here he is: beautiful and bare, impossible and perfect. Your fingers graze his vertebrae eagerly, and he reaches out to hold you for a long, shivery moment after he gets an eyeful of how you look at him.

“can i take your clothes off, too?” His teeth press your neck, then part to hold a piece of your skin for just a second. It’s not even a nip, just...holding.

“Yeah,” you exhale in anticipation, and he lets his teeth part again just as gently to let your skin go.

He leans back, touches your face and stares at your lips for a long moment. Thumbs slide along your cheeks and back over your ears; your eyelids droop as he brushes over your hair lightly. His smooth-ticklish fingertips, then his hard, flexible hands trace the back of your neck, spread out across your back and shoulders, keep going until they reach the hem of your shirt. He pulls it up and off you carefully; he never catches your ears or nose on your clothes despite the fact that he doesn’t have either, never has to worry about that when he takes off his own. He just has about a bazillion vertebral processes to tangle them on instead.

His expression softens even more when he sees you, traces tiny, pointed distal phalanges along your chest as goosebumps ripple across you. He steadies himself by holding you as he lies down for you to slide his shorts off. There’s an iridescent shadow in his pelvis that he glances at for a brief, curious moment; he smiles up at you, nothing but love in his face. You switch and let him take off your sweatpants. He strokes your belly from navel to fuzz and makes an expressive sound of desire from somewhere in his motionless skull, wherever it is that his voice comes from.

You both exhale heavily and press together when he lies down on you, wrap your arms around each other and touch slow and eager. His hard, flexible hands roam your body patiently, coming up to cup your face, guide your lips to his vertebrae. After a minute he rolls you on top of him instead so he can wrap his arms around you, then slides a hand down to your butt. You gasp soft against bone as smooth-pointed fingertips run up and down the inside and back of each thigh, then brush the soft little crease where they join on either side. You dart your tongue in tight spaces between his bones to hear him gasp, pull back a little to let him shiver.

He spreads his femurs to let you push your thigh between, and you can feel heat and resonance in his pelvis.

“Is that okay?” you ask quietly. “I’m not… bothering it, am I?”

“nope,” he exhales softly, amused. He cracks a socket open to look up at you with a smile. “kinda the opposite.” His socket slips shut again, and a crease appears on his browbone as he runs his fingertips along your sides and back, making you shiver and moan.

“like it when you do that,” he whispers happily. He pushes his crotch up into your leg some more, and you feel heat and magnetic pressure increasing there. You moan again as he reaches around to cup your ass with both hands, then squeezes you with bone arms and glides his fingers towards the quivering heat between your legs; wow...that’s...kind of...you’re not sure, but it’s driving you absolutely crazy with wanting him. And you’d be a lot more antsy if it wasn’t for his soft, sweet magic lying heavy in your soul, soothing and pleasuring you, making you want to take your time and savor every moment.

“can i touch here?” he whispers soft, fingertip gliding just beside your wet cleft. You blush, then nod against his collarbone. You cry out into his vertebrae when his fingers slide between your soaked lips then flick gently at your clit, tease soft at your entrance as he pushes his thrumming pubis against the front of your thigh. His other hand slides down to your ass and pulls up a little to open you, spreading your cheeks to tease you mercilessly from behind. You pant roughly; that’s really doing something for you. You feel very open and oddly… exposed? without anyone able to actually see...although you’re sure Sans can perceive it with at least one other dimension of his vision. You wrap your arms around and under him, hugging tight and reveling in his bare bones under you, his delicately pointed fingertips sliding, flicking, and slicking you into a quivering mess of arousal. The integral magic in his body oscillates slow and steady where your belly presses into the space there, soft and permeable, feels _between_ , feels like _him_. His breathing gets rougher as he lets whatever’s happening in his pelvis do its thing against your leg, and he pleasures you in a way that incites desire rather than satisfying it.

“wow…” he whispers, and adds, “you’re so wet...” when you make a wordless questioning noise. You think he might be trying to see your face, but you keep it buried in his neck, wiggling and whimpering as he drives you crazy with his phalanges. His other arm’s wrapped tight around you to hold you pressed against him, both of you feeling his magic swirling in your souls. It reminds you both how much you love each other in the lush presence of the pleasure you just shared, are sharing now, and will continue sharing for as long as you both want. Holy shit, no wonder they like to push at the beginning.

It feels like his genitalia’s deciding what it wants to be shaped like now, a firm length that he rubs against your heated, bare skin hesitantly with a shaky exhale. You arch your ass up in the air encouragingly with a plaintive moan, your wet tongue sliding all the way up his vertebral column, shoving your face in like you’re trying to get at his foramen magnum as he curses softly. You try and back into his fingers to get them inside you, but they dance away infuriatingly as you moan in wordless objection.

“switch with me,” he pants softly, and you consider that your weight might be a little much on him at this point, so you exhale explosively and roll off him with a hot blush. You also might need to...cool it a little, you suppose. Luckily he gets right up on you, slides his ribs against your chest and incidentally rubs his resonant genitalia on your belly just inside your hipbone, making you gasp and quiver with excitement that’s almost ticklish.

“i know,” he whispers as he rubs his face in your neck gently, pushes phalanges through your hair to touch your scalp soothingly. “i know… ’m excited too.” He rubs his thick resonance against you again, lets out a soft moan of yearning. “want you so much,” he gasps even softer, but he plants his hands on the bed to to either side of you and you loosen your arms around him.

He kneels up with a smile and a caress, then stops still.

“Are you okay?” you ask, watching him stare down at himself. His magic’s both iridescent and dark like the inside of his body, somehow immune to light, blocking it within its boundaries while letting it pass through. It _is_ a shadow rather than casting one. It’s glinting with subtle colors like his face when he feels strong emotions, like his soul when it comes out to offer itself to you.

His genitalia doesn’t look awkward or out of place, and it’s not abrupt; the width of his hips make it seem even less so. It’s not disembodied or floating like his soul when it’s out, either. It’s just the magic that always exists between the broad, heavy bones of his pelvis that hold it together, expanded in a natural progression centered around the joint in his pubis where it’s already the most dense. Right now it’s about the length of his hand from wrist to tip, and it’s chubby like him, especially at the base where it blends back along bones and into the rest of his integral magic. Nothing about it seems like an object; everything about it looks like part of his body, utterly inhuman and captivatingly lovely. Impossible and alive, just like the rest of him.

“yeah,” he replies softly, voice tight with strange, complex emotions. “’m okay. jus’… looks like me?” His hard, flexible palms caress your belly tenderly as he gazes entranced, then a hand goes up to his face to rasp magic out from under his socket with his thumb. A tiny noise, and his breathing goes a little uneven as he slides his hands up your thighs, then makes another sound as he gazes at what’s between them. “looks like me and you.”

“Are you okay with it?”

“yeah,” he answers quietly. “jus’ surprised. turns out, uh… i like it? like how we look together.”

He strokes your legs encouragingly with his hard, mobile hands, making you sigh and wriggle gamely, then glances at your face as he touches light at the top of your mound with fingertips. “more?”

You hum and nod, then shiver and sigh as phalanges tease at your wet folds. His teeth part, sockets changing shape as he feels and sees how turned on you are. He glances up, slides his hand down your body as you tilt your hips at him insistently, opens you a little with the tip of one thumb to push three fingers from his other hand inside you.

“ohh...” he whispers as you shove yourself up onto his bones with a choked cry, sockets narrowing. “you want me to-”

“I want you _so much_ ,” you sob, interrupting. Even his magic frothing gentle and loving inside you can only blunt your urgency, not do away with it entirely. “I want you to put it in me like we did that one time,” you whisper harshly, cover your eyes with your wrists.

He coaxes your hands away from your face with one of his, gazes into your eyes for a long minute. He shimmies down to lay on your body; you can feel his reformed magic on the inside of your thigh, drawing and resonant. He presses his forehead against yours and nudges gently, caressing the hair at your nape as he pants shallow, pleasuring you with his fingers as you quiver and sigh, trying to calm down a little.

“… you sure? that’s kinda intense, right? and it’s...been a while.”

“I miss you,” you whisper, throat tight. “I’m sure.”

“miss you too,” he replies plaintively, sliding his smooth-and-textured grin along your jawline. “miss bein with you like this. even jus’ bodies makes me feel…” He exhales raggedly. “it feels like we love each other.” You nod wordlessly because your eyes just don’t want to stop leaking, you don’t want to stop caressing the back of his ribcage and vertebrae, and your throat’s tight. “it’s jus’...i’m _real excited_ ,” his voice falls to a whisper. “don’t wanna get carried away, but...” he huff a short breath or two, listening to your tiny noises as he curves phalanges deep. “i want you _so much_. wanna put it in you like we did before,” he sobs tightly; you nod against him, squeeze him with your arms.

“if… if i wanna come,” he whispers, “can i do it like then?” His fingers question you inside. “when it’s in here,” he elaborates. “s’okay if you don’t want that,” he adds seriously; he means it. “figured out how to make it happen like this, too.” He pulls his fingers out of you, rubs his carpals in a gentle circle that both soothes and engenders desire before departing for the unknown. You wipe your eyes, wrap your arms around him. You feel him shiver; his shoulder moves as he touches himself, makes sure he’s ready. Like when he touches his soul first, checks in with himself and explores to find out what he wants. He rubs his face in your neck, respiration growing labored until it catches, escapes in a little moan. “feels real good when i do it,” he whispers harshly.

“You can do it either way,” you moan softly, caressing his skull with your palms, then cupping it between your hands to bring his face up, looking at him lingering and long. He leans up on his elbow with a ragged exhale, lets you look at his expression while he touches himself. It steals your breath a little, the way you can tell what you’ve asked for isn’t something he takes lightly; this is even something a little odd for him, but you can see he wants to at least as much as you do. And although it’s apparent his body _can_ go inside yours when it’s shaped like it is now, the concept that it’s supposed to, as if his body is owed yours this way, has obviously never crossed his mind.

It’s a concept you might never have noticed until it was so conspicuously absent; you’re glad neither of you’ve been inclined to name what his body does, because the words for human parts don’t describe it very well, and might create expectations that don’t fit. It doesn’t look like that, and that isn’t what it’s for. You stroke the grooves under his sockets as you change a little, realize something good about yourself and him.

That’s not what _anyone’s_ body is _for_.

You either do or you don’t; you don’t have to, but you _can_.

“you wanna see what i’m doing?” he asks breathlessly as your expression changes, and you nod eagerly. He leans up a little more, and you both glance down. His compressed palm cups his genitalia underneath, and the proximal of his thumb caresses the top as he bends his wrist gently, avoiding the tip. “i touch it different than you did, cause my hand’s different,” he pants in a soft whisper. He moans again, moving more insistently; his head bows until his frontal bone meets your forehead lightly, and he lets out another tiny noise. “guess i like watching this together too,” he adds tightly. What he’s doing right now is just as much of an intimate, special experience for him as anything you both do together.

Holy shit. You want him….so much. You want him to put that inside you, and make you come like that. Feel the way he moves when he’s excited, when he’s feeling everything you have to give him, too.

After all, it’s not even like he makes a mess, and he wasn’t rough about it. “I like the way you fuck me when you’re coming,” you blurt out, and his sockets go round as he moans again; his skull lolls down into your neck as his shoulder works furiously. “Can I come like that, too?”

He nods against your neck, and you squeak as he gives you a little nip there.

“sorry, ‘m-”

“Don’t be,” you sob tightly, writhing up against him.

He curses softly, and you feel his magic nudging you. “you sure you’re ready? ‘m _real_ excited, okay?” he admits tightly. “don’t wanna hurt you.” He slicks your bodies against each other at your fervent assurances, moans soft and low, traces your ear and jawline with his nasal bone. “figured something else out too,” he pants, rubbing his magic in a tight circle on your clit with his guiding hand to pleasure you both. “when we do stuff like this… can’t think bout anything ‘cept how much i love you,” he rushes out with a choked sob. “makes me wanna come. not jus’...okay with it if it happens. makes me _want_ to. s’why i asked,” he blurts, presses his teeth to your face as he pants and pushes at your entrance questioningly. “it’s… loud, like you said. doesn’t feel like anything else when we’re together… that’s what makes it feel so good. feels like _you_.”

You can’t help it; your arms tighten around warm-and-tepid bones. You feel the heat in his face, feel his soft, heavy magic soothing your soul.“I missed you so much.” It’s a hissing whisper. “ _Please_. I can’t wait anymore.”

He makes a tiny noise, squeezes you back. He goes up on his elbow so he can see your expression, moans when he does. “okay….okay,” he soothes, soft and fervent. The back of a gently curved phalanx coaxes your lips apart; blunt, tingling warmth replaces it. His hot breath shudders out in a whisper, “here it comes.” Although you both inhale sharply when he pushes inside, it goes a lot easier this time, probably because it’s shaped different, and you’re hot and open with wanting him. He’s watching you carefully to make sure it’s okay, but it’s more than okay. His thick, resonant genitalia sliding into yours might be the best thing you’ve ever felt in your life, and the cracked noise you make sounds like it, too. You don’t know how he makes this feel so good either, but he sure does. Maybe it’s the same reason he said; this feels like he loves you, feels like _him_.

He leans in closer until his face touches yours; his curled fingers caress the side of your face over and over as he starts to move inside you shallowly, and your heated moan gushes out against his face. The points in his sockets tremble and expand, ragged breaths mingling as you hold each other tight. This is easier too; neither of you have to be quite as careful, and he’s realizing that. You arch your back and pull in with your legs to encourage him, and he leans up to watch your expression as he lets you guide him in further.

“you want it all the way in there?” he whispers breathlessly as he tests the deepest parts of you hesitantly, and you nod, sign agreement. He fills you all the way to the brim and then stretches you just a little more, it’s _intense_ , and his magic-softened bones come to rest against you outside as he exhales plaintively.

He’s shedding magic lightly, a curling tingle that sensitizes deeper than the surface, deeper even than where he penetrates you. It’s the sensation of his magic sliding between the atoms of your body, and apparently thinking about it does something to your face that he likes. He grunts softly as he pulls back, then fills you so slow it leaves you gasping.

“you’re _so_ _soft_ ,” he pants huskily after a minute, then rubs his forehead on yours while he makes a small, tight noise, pulls all the way out as you moan in protest. Your breath shudders in and out as his blunt magic pushes your wet lips apart on its own without catching, slides right in all the way to the hilt. He tries to go even deeper with a tiny, plaintive noise; you groan as the thick base stretches your entrance wide. “how can you hold me that tight and still feel so soft?” he whispers shakily as he withdraws, then dips into your entrance a few times maddeningly slow and shallow. You can feel yourself fluttering at him hungrily like your body’s kissing the tip of his genitalia, the part he doesn’t like to touch with his own hands. He gives a broken moan and slips out again, then sinks right back in where you’re hot and open; he glances up quickly when it pushes a shuddering, desperate cry out of you. “shh-sh-sh, sorry” he whispers when he sees your wrecked face, “i’ll stay in, sorry...” He caresses you apologetically and stays deep to to give you short little thrusts, to let you feel him inside you, let you hold on to how he feels in you.

“didn’t…didn’t tell you why i liked this so much before, even at first,” he continues as he nudges up inside you faster but just as deep, and holy shit you missed this. You missed _him_ , you missed his sweet, sexy little narratives. He sounds like he needs you to know just as much as when you touch his soul. “before it started feeling as good as it did, right when i saw your face…” He lets you know how much he’s enjoying himself, wants you to hear how much he loves you. He needs to tell himself that it’s okay to feel this way, that it’s good to be inside you like this. He needs to look and touch, to know you want him there.

He leans up to look at you again, makes a faint keening sound. “when my body’s like this and i push it in here...” he sighs, demonstrates, “your face looks kinda like when i push magic,” he pants as he caresses your chin, then you feel his fingers slide down your body, touch your chest. When he pushes it in _you_ , that’s what he means. Your lips part as your breathing goes unsteady, and you feel tension in the skin under your eyes as you gaze up at him longingly.

You still feel him, the endless fractal of his possible self blooming out into a ragged-petalled peony, a midnight blue sensation like your soul. He looks like you, _feels like you_. His expression slides into awe as he watches you feel this, thinking about when he becomes possible everywhere, his personhood blossoming out from within like your most essential self. You let out a guttural moan because you still feel it, it’s still happening. That rush of peace fills every bit of you, has since he flooded his love in your soul to let you hold on to him there, too.

_You still feel him._

When he _sees_ that you do, his sockets go round with a ragged gasp. He leans up and shifts his weight to his pelvis, bones locking against you like an exquisite puzzle; a sharp curve travels down his spine to push his genitalia so deep into your body your chin lifts, and you make a tight, tender noise. Then you keep making it, because he repeats the motion with sudden, urgent haste until an astonished cry escapes him.

“’m gonna come, okay?” he blurts out shakily, lurches back down to push his arm underneath your shoulders and hold you tight; the complex, mobile palm of his other hand slides flat against your cheek to press your faces together. “ohh _hh_ _my_ god,” he exhales high and surprised as his arm tightens, and you hold him right back, sliding your thighs up and into the space between his pelvis and ribcage; you try not to impede his movements too much, but your whole body curls around him in pinioning delight. You hold him so tight you _feel_ the moment it happens for him, like a millimeter of additional space suddenly appears between every bone at once. He lets out a dazed grunt; this is loose, literally expansive for him.

“ _love_ you,” he whispers, weight relaxed into you, face buried in your neck now as he strokes your hair and face again and again. You cry out louder than he does as he fucks you right through his climax, bones barely tense at all and genitalia tingling into you fluttery and full. He moans in ascending awe as soft waves move through him, and he pushes the rhythm of what he feels up inside you for much longer than expected, more words spilling out of him helplessly.

“love you so much… you feel it? ohhh _,_ i know you do….know you do…” He’s still going and you’re loving it, you’re shoving your hips up to let him fill you as deep as he needs, guide him to where you like it best. “yeah, do that,” he rambles breathlessly, smooth phalanges sliding down to your hip to squeeze it tight, skull rolling slow and heavy on your shoulder. “ohh, do that… lemme know you want it… jus’ like that...” His breath runs out as he gives you a few sharp, tight thrusts right where you want him with the added leverage of his hand holding you steady.

He inhales against your skin with a clacking shudder, then sighs in tight satisfaction as he leans up to look into your face again through narrowed sockets. He lengthens his movements with increasing enthusiasm and a gratified hum, but his eye lights shrink and he stops when he sees your surprise.

“you okay?”

“You’re not...done?” you ask.

His eye lights quiver. “not… unless you are? you said you wanted to do it like before, but… something else maybe?”

“Oh.” Wow, okay. He’s not the only one learning things about how his body works. “No, I still want to.”

He touches his forehead to yours, and you can see from the shape of his sockets that’s he’s smiling. His breath pants out soft against your lips as he asks, and you moan softly in answer as he turns to the side and changes the angle, pulls your leg up over his pelvis so he can rest a little.

“mmm… could get used to that,” he says softly, caressing your face with his. “might even go again. that was real easy and soft, felt like… felt jus’ like...” He pulls back as his face smoothes out with that soft, shocked look he gets sometimes; he gives you long, gliding movements propped up on an elbow to look at you. He watches your face while he pets your hip soothingly and pleasures you inside, looking and thinking, feeling how you respond to what he does.

“that was _me_ ,” he whispers raggedly, staring with raw adoration into your eyes; his hand slides between your cheek and the pillow to caress it with his thumb in wonder. “first time we touched each other all at once. got real close and you didn’t know why i liked it so much, til…” He pants, moves in you more insistently as magic slides from his sockets again. “thought i made _you_ come from how i felt, but that was _me_. didn’t even have anything like this, but rubbing together like that, and…” He doesn’t have to say it, you know. You were there. “wanting to do that with you made me _come_ ,” he whispers, and the points in his sockets quiver as he makes a tiny, vulnerable noise. “you _felt_ it.”

You wipe his tears and guide his face to yours to be kissed; you believe him, and you both remember what he’d been thinking of. What had made him feel that way, what had made him come like that. The closeness that had let his climax echo into you so strongly, you’d had _his_ orgasm before you even knew he could have them.

That was him just thinking about merging souls together, that thing that’s been making you both so afraid for so long.

The Thing that happened by accident, and hurt you both so much.

His bone fingers slide down your chest and belly, and he looks softly into your eyes as his thumb finds your clit above where he penetrates you, rubs the proximal across a few times. When you moan and push against it, he starts to flick light and insistent with the tip. “this work for you?” he whispers, hot breath gushing out over your lips.

“Yeah,” you whimper, flooding with tension and clenching down on his reformed magic as he pushes inside shallowly. “Just...” you pant and pull him closer, and he changes the angle of his arm to allow it, watching your face with a dazed expression. He plants a foot on the bed to fuck you deeper as you moan and pull at him. “...yeah,” you whisper harshly as your eyelids flutter.

You kiss his mandible softly, pull him closer to get at the sweet spot there, make him shudder and sigh as you both think about his retroactive little surprise. Neither of you is interested in touching souls together anytime soon, but it’s giving you a better association with it, feels safer to think about it close like this. Taking care of each other, feeling good. Gives you a good memory to drape over the bad one, soft and dampening like a blanket. You cry a little too, hold his shoulders as you pleasure each others’ bodies, feeling something like catharsis as you change a little more together, try to see something good about being together like that instead.

“you’re close, huh?” You’ve been close for a shockingly long time, and you’re amazed you’ve been able to hold back as long as you have. He feels your frantic nod against his collarbone and moans, pushing inside with even more excitement. “you want to?”

“Yeah,” you grit out tightly, “But I don’t want to stop...”

“me either,” he whines, heated breath huffing out against the top of your head. “can’t believe how good you feel, you know that?” he says quietly, rubbing his grin against you. His arm tightens around your shoulders even though he’s leaning up on that elbow to hold him firm against you, and the position of his other arm reminds you of the time he’d pushed his magic in your soul fast and hard. He doesn’t have a belly to push against yours, so there’s plenty of room for him to maneuver between you like this. He fucks you steadily where you’re wet and open, and flicks his thumb light and repetitive just above, right where your tension coils itself.

“love you, okay?” he murmurs brokenly into your hair as he shoves you insistently toward the precipice, every bone in his body tuned in to what’s happening in yours.

He huffs his breath in and out a few times, thumb searching the knot of your tension for the thread that unravels it.

“that’s me,” he continues in a thick, dreamy voice, then it quavers up to introduce a plaintive note. “that’s me in there.” He adjusts again so he can see you, make sure it’s what you want. You’re quiet and holding your breath; it’s so close, so tight. He inhales unevenly, and a terribly vulnerable expression flattens his fixed grin, tilts and twists his sockets. Magic slides down when your hands find his face; you hiccup his name, and he sobs wordlessly in response. You’ve seen him look like this once before; he still needs to hear it, despite everything. Even though he knows, even though he feels it. He doesn’t want to need it, but he does.

He does.

“ _do you love me_?”

It’s a sobbed whisper as his distorted face presses yours desperately.

“ _Yes_ ,” you manage; his wordless cry holds pleasure, relief, more joy than you knew he had in him. Here it comes; your eyes slip shut and your arms slide around his neck; it’s almost too much. “ _Love_ you,” you choke, and you come so hard he has to adjust with a surprised utterance to keep your clenching from shoving him right out of you. Surprise turns to a ragged coo of pleasure as you squeeze him tight and rhythmic. You wail out your climax into his neck, clutching him just as close as sensation tears through your body, softened by his voice and deepened by his magic in your soul. You hold the mobile cage of his bones tight with arms and legs, feel his magic everywhere in you; he gasps when you lick it off his collarbone, moans when you throw your head back to kiss it from his skull.

He slows as you pant for breath, moves his fingers away to caress your hip instead as you calm. You’re a little shaken inside; even filled with love from your touch, even watching your face he still needs reassurance, still has to make sure. He doesn’t need that when you touch souls, even though….hmm. He still doesn’t know how this feels for you, not for sure. Bodies and souls: you’ve never done both at once since his genitalia started showing up, and apparently he can climax even without any from the combination.

It makes you think, and thinking makes you wonder.

“I like mine, but yours are different,” you pant softly, and he makes a tiny noise as he looks into your eyes steadily.

Your fingers rub between your bodies, touch his sternum.

“Can I feel it again?”

“you...like how it feels for me?” he whines, sockets growing sweetly pained. You nod enthusiastically, and he lets out an explosive breath before continuing. “you wanna call me again? see if i’ll come out for you?”

“ _Yes_ ,” you sob, and he fucks you a little harder.

He makes a tiny noise as his sockets narrow in anticipation. “if...if you want to feel it, might wanna touch right when you pull, okay?” he admits breathily.

“Make you jump right out into my hand?” You’re panting with it now, shoving your body at him hungrily to be filled with his tingling, resonant magic. “Then feel you come from it?”

“yeah,” he sighs, shivers violently as his sockets shut, then open again. You spread your fingers and glide them up his ribcage, middle finger in the center of his sternum.

“I might too,” you moan enthusiastically. Honestly you probably could have again already, but something about his magic in you weighs you down with the sweetness of anticipation, makes you want to put off fulfillment. The yearning in you quivers wide and sweet, now that the edges are all blunted off.

He looks down into your face, expression soft with wonder and pleasure. “same time, huh?” He slows, leans down to hold you. Stops a minute and pets your hair soothingly, then grinds to make you sigh and writhe, whispers into your neck.

“wanna get on top a me, do it like that? don’t wanna get carried away, and it’s….when you touch alone… it’s a lot for me.”

“Will your hips be okay?”

“mmhmmm,” he hums affirmatively, rubs his face, takes a bit of skin in his teeth again as he pulls back inside you. “jus’ like that,” he says softly, holding it there gently while you shiver and he fills you slow and deep. “you don’t hurt me, even when you get excited.” He traces a tiny distal phalanx down your side to make you shiver again; he likes it, makes a little amused sound. “even when i push how _i_ feel in there,” and he pushes his body too just thinking about it. “you’re real careful. always have been. but...” He lets go, leans back. “ _your_ hips gonna be okay?” he smiles gently.

You think about it, then smile and cup his broad, inhuman face in your hands.

“Yep. I’m up for it.” You tilt your head sideways. “Just sit there, we’ll figure it out.”

“k.” He sighs, starts to pull out but interrupts himself with a groan and fucking you some more, making you gasp appreciatively and giggle. He finally manages it for real this time by kneeling up and bending over, pushing his face into your chest and laughing at himself a little. He sighs as you pet the back of his skull, then manages to flop over and sit up against the headboard, cupping his genitalia with his hand protectively.

You throw a leg over him and kneel over his lap, assessing and deciding. You check his face, and he’s staring at you both together again.

“Like what you see?” you comment, amused.

“yeah,” he pants faintly, ingenuous expression fixed on what’s going on below your waists. “looks… exciting? like something good’s gonna happen.”

Shit. He’s too cute.

“You’re too cute,” you groan. You can’t help yourself, you hug him and rub your face all over his skull, then grab the headboard and reach down between your bodies to guide him inside. You blush, then lean back a little so he can see something good happening.

His teeth part as he feels and watches his body go inside yours, and he pants helplessly at he looks back up at your face in awe. His hands shake a little as they twist into a blanket and the pillow he’s sitting on.

“Are you okay?” you ask, pausing. He nods frantically, and you groan as you sink down on him, caressing his skull with your free hand. It’s a little twingey and too-deep, so you arch your back and that’s better. You move your hips in a little circle, then test it out up and down.

“oh… ohh fuck...” He’s staring down again, breath getting labored as you slide onto him all the way to grind on him a little. “that’s, uh… that’s real…” His socket slip shut with a cracked whimper; he lets go of the bedding he’s clutching and slides arms around your waist a little suddenly, pulls you into a hug and also to a stop.

“gimme a minute,” he whispers, and clonks his forehead on your shoulder, rubs it across. You settle onto him and hug him back as he sighs and shivers. “you’re fine,” he adds quietly as you test how much weight his lap can take. “go head n take a load off.” You do just that, feeling very full in body and soul and remarkably calm considering how out of your mind with desire you are. His magic really helps with the whole patience thing, doesn’t it. You pepper his skull with little kisses, let him stroke your back with the almost-pointy tips of his hard, smooth fingers until you shiver again. He really seems to get a kick out of it, and you like it too.

He inhales shuddering and deep, huffs it out as he tilts his head back to look at you with a sultry smile, sockets opening long and oval. “changed my mind,” he informs you, blinks his sockets slowly. “think it’s gonna be too much at once if you call me.” His smile warms even more. “still want you to touch me though. you want to?”

“Yeah,” you breathe enthusiastically, then notice something. “Here,” you say, then put your hand around his shoulders to lean him forward as you lean back. He makes a wordless questioning noise that dissipates as he feels you shoving a pillow between his back and the headboard. He giggles a little as you rearrange him to your satisfaction.

“lookin out for me, huh?” he comments, grinning up at you and ignoring the magic beading at the corners of his sockets.

“I made a promise,” you point out; you wipe his face with your fingers, then again.

“you...like how that feels?” he asks softly when you rub it into the tops of your thighs, let it sink into your body. “Yeah,” you reply immediately, wondering why he asks. It sounds like there’s something behind his words, although you can’t imagine what.

“what does it feel like for you?” he whispers; you frown, thinking about it. It’s pretty hard to describe. Then you smile.

“Do you want to find out?”

His sockets widen, he nods fervently and touches his sternum. His expression gets introspective and dreamy while he pets himself and you. You stay still but you’re stuffed so full of him you can’t help squeezing tight around his drawing, fluttering body, making you both moan and sigh. He takes his time, clack-rasping his palm over and over, and even dipping fingertips into his intercostal spaces. His skull ticks back against the headboard and his eye lights meet your gaze as he pulls his fingers back; his soul follows them eagerly. He moans soft and clear when he sees himself, seeming both eased and agitated by something.

“’m not gonna touch it,” he whispers unevenly. Ahh. He doesn’t want to push more; he _desperately_ wants to push more. “you gonna take care of it for me?” he adds, and you feel yourself clench down on him in response, making you both inhale sharply.

“Yeah. I’m going to take good care of you, okay?” You lean in to bring your faces closer, sliding your arm up until your forearm’s laid along the top of the headboard, and you bring your other hand up under his luminously essential self reverently. His fingers twitch, then he slides his hands down to the tops of your thighs and glides them back and forth. He pants heavily, eye lights broadening.

“I’ll let you know before I touch, okay?” you whisper as he leans back into the pillow and tilts his face up at you.

“mmm. yeah, okay,” he agrees dreamily. He blinks soft again. “want you to show me how _you_ like it,” he adds in a thick whisper, “wanna feel you all at the same time...” and he shuts his sockets with a faint click.

You take your time looking at him and move a little bit in his lap, deciding what you like and what you don’t as he sighs and moans delicately under you. It gets harder for him to talk when his soul’s out, so you pay close attention.

“Ready?” you whisper.

“yup.” He nods slow and deliberate, grips down into the pillow. You curve your fingers in until they touch his delicate heart.

A choked grunt forces its way roughly through his teeth as his head jerks back, his sockets open up round as he tenses and shakes because oh….wow. You stay still, because just the sensations you feel having him in you like this is a lot for him; his whining exhale still makes you flutter around him, and he makes another tiny noise as his thoughts swim away like startled fish in the rush of physical sensations happening in you both. He can’t help but let you know this is significantly more intense than when he gets penetrated; it’s more than full, more than resonant… he didn’t know it tingles(?) you like _this_ when he sheds out inside. What you mean by _spicy_.

He doesn’t taste like this to monsters, that’s for sure. Tastes _sweet_ to them; him too. Can’t really stop you from knowing that either, especially not touching alone, right where he’s all filled up with your earlier touch and his push. You touch foreheads with him as he pants heavily; you don’t think he can actually see when his eyes are that big (he lets you know: nope). Ohhhhh fuck, yeah that’s _spicy_ alright.

You do your best to touch lightly, but this is even a lot for you. Wow. Wowww.

“Is it too much?” you whisper, dazed.

He huffs a bit, because nope. Not... _yet_ , anyhow. A quivery impression of something very hot; he blushes a little and tries to make his half-drowned thoughts coherent through the haze of pleasure and intensity.

Monsters taste each others’ magic because it carries tiny echoes of their soul through the vehicle of their bodies. Sensations, desires, intentions...feelings, sometimes. You breathe heavily as he lets you know a little more with an accompanying weird feeling: the soul-impression your brain’s translating as ‘taste’ is actually something closer to a combination of ‘absorb’ and ‘communicate’ in his mind. He gives a tiny huff of amusement at your bafflement; that weird feeling is him filing this information away to be applied to his working theories later. He doesn’t have a brain, so his thinking works different than yours and it feels weird to you. Turns out when you touch him alone when he’s this worked up, things come through unfiltered if he doesn’t mediate it; also apparently he can do something that mediates it that he’ll figure out later. Who knew.

He groans softly; when his hips shift he sheds a little more, shivers as he feels the way it slips into your body. Or...between your body? Right in there...somewhere. It really _is_ good, isn’t it?

“Yeah,” you hiccup, rub your forehead on his frontal bone where even more magic sheds across lightly. This feels good for him when it happens (for this reason), but it isn’t a voluntary process or anything. You concentrate on how it feels for you; he exhales shakily and his thoughts manage to school a bit before they flit apart again. You can’t tell how he feels from absorbing his magic because your soul’s not continuous with your body the same way a monster’s is. Instead, you feel good _physically_ from it: soothed, nourished, and pleasured. It’s spicy and stimulating, makes you want him even more.

You moan with yearning, and he lets you know he’s ready now.

You kiss his magic-sheened skull and grind down eagerly into his lap, lick your lips as you take your pleasure gently there. Your head falls back as it slides between the particles that interact with each other in a way you call ‘your tongue’, and something about the sensation makes you think of what you feel already there... the way he’s already present _between_ where you exist, flooding and becoming in the place where you _also_ exist.

Ohhh.

 _That’s_ what it tastes like.

_It tastes like his soul._

He makes his dry, overstimulated coughing sound when that feeling hits him, and you gasp as it echoes back into you and drive yourself down on him wildly.

“I’m gonna come,” you warn him, then moan with his wordless encouragement because he wants you to let him feel that too. His breath explodes in a rough growl through his teeth, shaking hands sliding back onto your thighs to pet you encouragingly; he can feel you’re already right there and he wants to go with you, he wants to _feel what it’s like_ when you go over the edge with him inside you like this.

Show him how _you_ like it.

You lean forward and twist your hips hungrily, just enough space between your bodies for his luminous self, and you curve your middle finger in deep to let this wash through him as much as you can, as much as he wants. He’s weeping and panting with loving you, with being fucked by you, with your raw, intense touch filling up his soul. He makes a strangled noise but he’s _okay_ , he’s good, _he likes this_. He can’t get hurt just from feeling this way; you’re giving him these feelings and he’s _allowed_ to have them. He lets you make him feel just as good as you do, and he opens for you even more.

You push your body down around his with a breathless cry, and the first wave hits you slow and diffuse. The back of his skull hits the headboard with a resounding thunk; his eye lights blend apart until they’re completely translucent, and he makes a low, guttural exhale you’ve never heard before because

ohhh, this is _deeper than his_ , and

holy shit this is _his body_ inside you that he’s feeling, making you come, and

it’s _so much_...it’s so…

You’re coming, and he’s utterly _filled_ with you. He can’t think about anything else, can’t _think at all_ , just moan and feel you.

You’re all he ever wants to taste, hear, feel, smell ever again; it’s _everything_

 _you’re everything_.

He questions you wordless, you flood him with acceptance and encouragement. He takes your forearm and pulls your hand back toward himself; his soul merges right back into itself. He shouts and writhes so much he slips out of you as the pushed pleasure and love hits him all over again, then his arms hook under your legs as he flips you onto your back like a goddamn amateur wrestler.

The first thing you feel is his rush when he collapses loosely on top of you, but then his thick length falls right back inside you wth his weight behind it, shoved home without resistance or guidance on the slick flood of your climax. His impact and sudden depth of penetration push a weak, shuddering coo out of you; he growls low and sudden when he hears it. When your knees slide into the bend of his elbows, he starts rolling your body back and forth under his broad, heavy pelvis to create friction inside rather than withdrawing at all. His breathless shout as his thick base stretches your entrance wide echoes through you, flooding your senses with him. You’re so full of his magic body and soul, insistent and tingling and hard and he’s-

“gonna go again,” he manages to gasp, and then he’s shoving himself into you wildly, leaning in further to press his face to yours as he cries out rhythmically; he’s fucking you hard, pushing how he feels right into you as much as he can. There’s no belly to press into yours, just softly resonant magic. He’s lying on you so heavily your flesh pushes into the spaces between his shaking bones; you’re vaguely aware the shape of your cries are words of encouragement and affirmation as your arms slither up and around him.

You thread your fingers unthinking through the processes of his currently extremely mobile and shivery-tense lumbar spine, and he inhales sharp and stills it. He leans up on his hands and moves with his legs instead so he doesn’t pinch your fingers; his sockets go round, then slam shut so hard you hear them clack.

You twitch, about to pull them out when he yelps “keep em there,” and then he’s throwing his head back with a strangled cry, showing you the lovely white vertebrae under his chin and shivering himself to careful, gliding completion while tilted up inside you sharply. The suddenly acute angle feels like it travels through your entire being like an electric pulse, and you start to spasm around him yet again with a low, surprised keen.

Magic floods the corners of his screwed-shut sockets to patter down on your skin; a shocked moan escapes him as he feels your climax happening around his own, and the sound keeps happening until it cracks open to spill words out. “oh _fuck,_ ” he sobs as he slides rapidly back and forth inside your body rather than impacting, voice wheedling into a tight whisper as he feels you gush out around him.

“ohhh, me too… me too, darlin’, _jus’ like that_ , ohhhh fuck...” The deep tingle of his spent magic adds itself to your flood, and it almost feels like his spine is vibrating between your fingers. You grunt heavily as even more sheds out into you; he moans and suppresses a shudder, makes a tiny coughing noise.

At this point you’re beyond satisfied, moaning wordlessly now in that sweet spot between sated and sore as his movements eventually slow, get shallow. He grunts and clatters all over as you finally pull your fingers out from between his processes, opens his sockets and blinks them at you like he can’t see straight. “you all good?” he gasps, and you nod, then add “Yeah” just in case. You both moan again as he pulls himself out of you and manages to flop over on his side, panting hoarsely as he reaches out with arms and legs to hold you again.

“h-holy shit,” he gushes before he even catches his breath. “that… heh, that thing you did...”

“Huh?” you gasp, because you both have done a rather large amount of things, very recently.

You feel his hand grope onto yours; he must be bending his arm nearly backwards to do it but he pushes one of your fingers gently between his spinal processes, then lets it go.

“was… was gettin’ carried away,” he pants breathlessly, “but that made me go slow and easy, made it feel _so_ _soft_ ,” he cries, rubs his face into the top of your head some more, uses that arm to hug you even tighter. “how’d you know to do that?”

You hug him tight, still trying to catch _your_ breath. “On accident,” you admit with a weak giggle, then you jump and moan as a bony palm cups you between the legs lightly.

“sorry,” he pants. “you okay here?”

You make a noise of understanding. “Yeah. Sore, but i’m fine.”

He exhales explosively. “sorry,” he says again, but you shake your head.

“No, it was awesome. That just happens when you’re made of meat, Sans. Comes with the territory.” He starts laughing, and you frown for a long several seconds before you start laughing, too. You reach down carefully to explore his territory too; it feels interesting when it starts going back in, and he’s told you his doesn’t get sensitive once that happens.

He makes a cute little mewl; leans his skull on you with a sigh. “gonna put it back where it goes?” he asks softly, and just holds you between the legs as you nod, caresses the inside of your thigh with his thumb as you coax his magic back into his pubic symphysis. You wonder if he’s hungry as your breathing slows and you tongue the roof of your mouth absently; he shed so much you’re not even thirsty.

“Does it go back the same when it’s shaped different?” you ask idly, feeling more satisfied and safe than you think you might ever have in your entire life.

He makes a negative hum. “sheds out more other times, so there’s less to go back. or… remember that time you were kissin’ it?”

You give a wicked little laugh, and he exhales in amusement.

“’pparently that one goes in behind? like...part of it’s my…” he frowns, then his hand leaves you to guide yours around to the back of his sacrum, lets you feel a spot you haven’t paid much attention to before. It’s an opening that happens to also be packed with magic you can’t penetrate at all, then the name floats up from underneath a decade and a half.

“Sacral hiatus,” you provide helpfully, and he snorts.

“i know,” he grins, “jus’ wanted to give you an excuse to touch it.” He winks, then inhales slow as your fingertip tests it.

“Apparently I’ve been neglecting my anatomy homework,” you observe, and he giggles. “Do you know what the, um...thing it...made? Is called?”

This frown’s a little more genuine, like he’s remembering something half-heard.

“don’t usually name em, but i think monsters who got that sorta thing… wanna say… hemipenes? don’t quote me on that though.” You glance down; his genitalia’s gone back to its resting state, so you leave off touching him and just hold him, feel the weight of his soothing magic in your soul.

“I wonder if touching you there would make the same thing happen,” you muse quietly.

He shrugs. “it’s different every time, though,” he replies easily enough.

“I wonder if _you’re_ different every time,” you blather amiably, wadding up some blanket to pad his shoulder and cuddling right back up. Then you glance at the door, which you have no plans to get up and actually lock because you're never getting up again or leaving this bed for any reason whatsoever, so you pull the other blanket up over both of you. Just in case everyone comes home and then the house catches on fire and they burst into your room to rescue your lazy asses, they won’t also _see_ your lazy asses. “How does it actually work?”

“hmm?”

“Existing everywhere at once,” you clarify; then remember that Sans could just do the thing and get you out to safety. As long as he was awake, at least. “What kind of mathematical error could even _cause_ something like that?”

“mmm.” His sockets go long and oval. “spent a lotta time on that one after we talked, never got to an answer.” He glances at you. “hard to say what a mistake is in something when you don’t know what the right answer was...” he smiles a little. “don’t even know the _question_.”

“I’m guessing you have some theories.”

He grins softly at you, pleased as pie. “you know how that feels for me, a lil bit. not all of it, but...yeah. got some theories. most likely is that i’m moving a little bit off where i am, enough to make me be there. jus’…going over there by sliding my uhhh. all the stuff that ain’t physical in here,” he indicates his body “into itself. kinda like souls being in here and…” he makes a drawing motion away from his chest “when you take em out. they didn’t go anywhere; you’re in two places at once. i’m jus’ in a lot more than two. that make sense?”

You nod.

“then when i get there, somehow the physical stuff in that space gets to be part a me, and i leave the rest...wherever it was. jus’ pull it outta that space and uh. eat it? now that’s me.”

“Is that why you can...” You don’t know how to say it, so you mimic his hand motions with considerably less than mathematical precision. He shakes his head.

“what i make… the key, boxes, monster phone thingie... that’s more things in the _same_ space than should be able to fit there. never ran out a space before i ran outta juice on that, though i wonder if i ever got close. wonder what would happen if i did.” He grins impishly at the ceiling, and this might actually be the closest you’ve ever been to being frightened _of_ him. “that’s the thing bout numbers. no matter how small you go, there’s always one in between. don’t know how anyone can trust those things.”

You don’t, actually.

“Sans.”

He looks at you.

“Do you have a pet black hole hidden somewhere?”

He looks away, gets iridescent. “s’not a black hole.” Yet. “sides...nothing would happen.”*

“Sans.”

He looks sheepish but doesn't answer. You sigh. Monsters and their...hobbies.

“What are your other ideas?”

“’m sliding into other timelines,” he replies bluntly. “sometime where i’m a little off from where i am now.”

You make a buttface.

“yeah, i don’t like that one much either.” He laughs in a gallows humor sort of way.

“But how does that work? You’re not Frisk.”

He shakes his head.

“not using time to go there. and i don’t…” he sighs. “‘m using space. if that’s what it is.”

“You’re using space to change timelines?”

He nods.

“But… how?”

He thinks about that.

“that’s where the other keys come from,” he explains. “’cept they’re still where they are too.”

“Well, I absolutely hate that,” you admit easily.

“mmm hmm...” he replies blandly.

“What?”

He shrugs.

“What??”

“you did that to yourself once. s’why you hate it.”

You can’t argue with that. “But…”

“there a big difference between what i do and what frisk does,” he says shortly. “what chara does. i can’t unmake; they can. When they….get finished, it’s gone for real.”

You don’t like that even more, so you change the subject.

“I still don’t understand how shortcut works. Are you...somehow manipulating probability, making it more likely that you’re somewhere else?”

“nope,” he smiles. “i jus’… what’s that thing you say. ‘become’. still me, though.”

You narrow your eyes. “Is there an option of...otherwise?” you ask faintly.

He grins, then gets dreamy.

“wanna tell you a secret,” he smiles quietly. “might help you...understand a lotta stuff more. understand me.”

“Is it dangerous?” you ask dubiously.

“nah,” he sighs. “jus’… something a lotta humans couldn’t deal with… couldn’t understand, or might give em the wrong idea. think you might get it, though.”

“okay,” you agree, and cuddle into him a little more.

“Monster souls are all the same because they’re all the same soul,” he says finally.

You give hum a frustrated look. “you just said the same thing twice like it means something.”

He shakes his head, then winks.

“It exists in a lotta places at once stead a two, like me.”

You feel like all the air’s being pushed out of you.

“wh-”

He nods.

“What the fuuuuuck,” you whisper, dumbfounded.

“even me an paps,” he adds with a little quirk at the edges of his fixed grin. “cept we got somethin extra in there, no clue how. but it’s not _in_ there, it’s...” he frowns. “it’s _on_ there. part but not part, like when you touch someone’s soul...like monster drinks, too. y’know?”

“I… yeah,” you breathe. You call it a _deformation_ , but it’s not bad like it sounds. “It becomes.” What the _fuck_.

“the barrier needed seven souls to break it, cause that’s how it got made in the first place. remember that stuff al sent you bout how the barrier got gone?” he asks.

You nod but you’re confused; it had taken _six_ human souls, and the souls of every single monster underground wielded by Asriel during a fleeting moment of love, hope, and compassion they provided.

“s’why it took every soul in the underground to make _one_.” Ohhh. He smiles softly at the ceiling. “s’all one piece. s’why monster souls are uh… ‘weaker’, but not….really. it’s just that they’re an infinite part of one infinite thing. why we all have ‘love, hope, and compassion’… i got all those and a little extra, too.”

“That’s why you and Alphys could analyze your traits separately? From your soul, because it’s...the part that isn’t traits is a part of everyone’s soul?”

He shakes his head. “not _part_. same soul. buncha different people.”

“Holy shit,” you say after about two beats. “ _That’s_ why monster souls don’t...persist or whatever. They go back into… the rest of you??”

He inclines his skull once.

Oh… oh _s_ _hit_.

“That’s...what’s wrong with Flowey?” you say shrilly.

He nods again almost sadly.

“cause a what he and chara did. he can’t go back, and chara can’t go forward.”

You shiver with existential horror; Asriel cut off from the cycle of monster life forever, Chara bound to wherever _here_ is, split into two different vessels.

“They're _stuck_ like that,” you breathe, finally realizing. “Chara and Asriel are still stuck together, and neither of them can get out. they can’t… they can’t _die_.”

He looks grim.

“nope. like the uh. like endogeny and them, can’t die anymore. can’t go back in, get brought out again.”

“So when...monsters are born, they’re just… breaking off a piece?”

He starts laughing, rustily at first but then with more enthusiasm.

“shit,” he giggles darkly. “gotta tell that one ta alphie.”

“But...what happens to human souls?”

His grin turns ironic. “you ever figure that one out in a way you can explain, think you might start a new religion. humans _love_ those things.”

You give him a hard glance, and he shrugs.

“hafta ask alphie bout that. she’s the one knows human stuff.”

“Is that why Grillby can just...make children?”

“dunno,” he says with a shrug. “tried askin him, but he doesn’t care bout stuff like this.”

Oh.

“How do physical things and… continuum things… interact though?”

He thinks about it.

“numbers.”

“Huh?”

“hmm. okay. you got time and space, right? time’s where space isn’t. you got particles, right? continuum’s where particles… ain’t.”

You narrow your eyes at him.

“continuum's one. a...a particle’s one too, but still divisible. infinitely. so you put a particle and a… hmm. say it’s a soul.”

“Sans,” you groan, “are you about to tell me something is two and one at the same time?”

He glances to the side, then back.

“...maybe?”

You give him a sincerely piteous expression, rub your eyes.

“I need a nap,” you admit.

His face softens, then crumbles into an expression of raw, naked adoration.

“love you,” he whispers, visibly dumbfounded by his own capacity to feel happiness. “love you so much.”

You can relate.

“Love you, too.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Please understand actual physicists speak and behave more or less exactly like Sans the skeleton from Undertale. There is a zero percent chance that the character was not based on actual/an actual physicist(s). Just to prove that this “you just fucked a physicist” experience is 100% authentic, I present to you at attempt at explaining Hawking Radiation (the reason nothing would happen if Sans made a black hole) in an accessible way written by one:
> 
> “The reason for this is very subtle, and difficult to explain in words. Perhaps one day I will be able to explain why the black hole emits Hawking radiation in a way that is both intuitive and correct, but as of now I cannot, so I won’t. I will say, however, that the emission of Hawking radiation crucially relies on the fact that different observers have different notions of what they would justifiably call a particle.
> 
> While there were initially no particles in the quantum field before the black hole formed, the curvature caused by black hole messes up the definition of what a “particle is,” and so all of a sudden particles start appearing out of nowhere. You shouldn’t necessarily think of the particles as coming off of the horizon of the black hole, even though the formation of the horizon is crucial for Hawking radiation to be emitted.
> 
> Near the horizon, the “definition of what a particle is” is a very fuzzy thing.
> 
> However, once you get far enough away from the black hole, you would be justified in claiming that it is emitting particles. Capisce?”
> 
> https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/noahmiller/files/firewall.pdf#section.5
> 
> The thing about one and two is probably related to the Banach–Tarski paradox. Aaaaanyhow, no, nothing is real, and yes, it’s actually fine.  
>    
> this diagram’s my fave:
> 
> https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/10oct_lhc


	53. [sans.]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [The Smiths- Bigmouth Strikes Again](https://youtu.be/PtzhvJh9NRY)

It’s the first day of gyftmas, and jangly guitar and warbling vocals fill the main room of Grillby’s just as much as warmth and good vibes.

Of course Sans would put on his Rainy Day playlist if given half a chance, and Grillby’s absence is a _whole_ chance. Frisk had dropped you off out front and sped off again on the Vespa (after giving you a big, cheeky kiss on the cheek! That _flirt_ ) to pick up MK on their way to Toriel’s house.

When you’d been informed Sans wasn’t going to be joining everyone until he’d completed some kind of favor for Grillby, you’d asked if you could head over there, then come back to Toriel’s with him. Frisk had told you that of course you could, then offered to drive you. Angie and the kids are still off with Matt’s family doing some kind of holiday they celebrate, but you’ve been assured they’ll be back in time for Children’s Day or whatever, and will join you all at Toriel’s tomorrow morning.

You’re looking forward to finding out if your predictions on how much they’ll enjoy the monster holiday were accurate or not, and you’re hoping this year will be less fraught with conflict and revelation than last year. When Ange had asked you if monster holidays were less rife with emotional tension and burbling arguments it always seems families save up all year just for big get togethers, you’d had to admit that no...it’s more or less the same as human ones.

Sans is behind the bar seated on one of the taller stools, chin resting on his folded arms and sockets shut. As you approach, a fluffy white Dog in board shorts, a t-shirt, and some kind of custom made flip flops in neon orange comes up and says something to him. There’s a few inches of snow outside again this year; you assume the Dog’s from Snowdin, since most of the regulars here seem to be. Their fur must be pretty warm; either that, or the don’t feel the cold, like slimes and Sans. He cracks a socket open, reaches underneath somewhere and pulls out a full glass, sets it on the bar with a clink. The Dog puts money on the counter, takes the glass with a panting bark of thanks and turns away; Sans starts to close his socket again but sits up with a lazy grin when he catches sight of you.

“heya, good lookin’,” he greets saucily, making you blush a little. You assume that’s where Frisk gets it from. You slide up onto a barstool across from him, give him a nod.

“Are you… running the bar today?”

He shrugs. “jus’ for a lil bit. something going on, or you jus’ miss me too much already?” His low chuckle warms your heart as he sets his elbows up on the counter, winks as he cradles his broad face in his palms with a faint click.

“I missed you too much already,” you admit shyly; he gets extremely iridescent, even ducks his head like a schoolkid. A fish at the end of the bar notices and lets out a braying laugh, murmurs something to their companion who laughs even louder. Wow. You’ll have to remember that one, since Sans looks even more pleased that they’d noticed.

You know everyone has probably noticed you as soon as you’d come in, and everyone here today knows who you are; you know them too, enough to say hi at least. The bar’s not quite bustling, but Sans has explained to you that certain monsters prefer to spend holidays here for plenty of different reasons. It’s a nice place to go if you don’t have somewhere else you’d rather be, or if you’re just not in the mood to celebrate in a more traditional way. Although...hmm. You’ve also gotten the impression that this is a traditional place too, it’s just a… sadder tradition? You remember what Lola’d said about the gyftmas Sans and she had spent under the table; that had certainly been a less-than-happy reason, even if it turned out well in the end.

There’s a black tablecloth over one of the booths in the back, with a fake plastic tree sitting on top. It’s a lot smaller than the towering pines and spruces you’ve seen decorated outside the past few years, and so are the little waxed-paper gifts bundled underneath. Most of them have names scribbled on them; several don’t just in case of latecomers.

A song begins that you’re pretty sure you’ve never heard on his list here before, and you frown because now you’re wondering why. It’s actually one of the more popular Smiths songs.

You open your mouth, but Sans shakes his head with an unusually serious expression, so you shut it again with a click and a confused look. He nods his head significantly to the booth closest to the bar, and you notice that several seemingly random objects have been lined up on it; some of them look very dirty to be up on a table like that. Grillby keeps the place pretty clean, and-

Ohhh.

That’s not _dirt_ , is it.

You’ve got no idea what the song has to do with the funeral objects, but you’re not about to violate some kind of taboo on a holiday. It might be worth investigating further, though.

“Can I go, um. Pay my respects?” you ask, and he shrugs even though he seems pleased by that, too.

“knock yourself out,” he says, then folds his arms back up and sets his skull down chin-first, shuts his sockets. His grin flattens at the corners, but not all the way. He’s “asleep”, not asleep. You slide off the high barstool, and wander over to the table at your leisure. There’s something reassuring about the lack of compartmentalization in monster life; you glance over at Lola’s booth, where she appears to be “asleep” as well. There’s a funeral over here on the table, it looks like the flip-flops Dog is having a nice sleep underneath one of the free-standing tables, Two younger rabbit monsters are alternating between crying and making out in one of the back booths, and the fish who’s laughed and commented when you’d complimented Sans so outrageously is completely naked. Aaron is writing his name on one of the blank gifts; writing in your own name on a blank gift is also allowed, and not seen as anything particularly weird. Everyone likes gifts, just like everyone wants attention, compliments, and validation.

You sigh with contentment, and glance down at the dirty-seeming objects placed around the tabletop. They would make no sense if you didn’t know what they’re for. There’s a palette, a hat, fifty G, a screwdriver, a teapot, a few little toys and a bowl. Each item was a monster’s favorite object, and the reason they look dirty is because they’ve been smeared with the dust left when a monster dies. The dust is comprised of the physical substance they’d had in their bodies, which isn’t much.

It makes even more sense now that you know monster’s souls go back into the rest of them when that happens, rather than going ‘somewhere else’. Wherever human souls go when they die.

You sigh heavily, thinking about that for longer than you probably should. No one knows how much time they have left, but you have a better idea that most. You think. This year has been hard, and hard-won, but it’s been worth it to have had what you’ve had before you get annihilated or whatever. You haven’t actually asked Sans if annihilation works the same as unhappening, where it’s more or less like dying regular style and your soul just goes wherever they go, or back into some other self (all other selves). If it’s different (or worse), you kind of would rather not know.

Sans has whatever plans he has, but it seems like the status is going to remain pretty quo for now; he’s still waiting, not rocking the boat. And no one can make Sans do anything he’s decided he’s not going to. That includes doing anything about whatever Frisk’s _trying_ to do, and whatever Alphys is trying to do to help or hinder it. And in the meantime, Flowey’s trying to find a way to finally do what Asriel’s wanted all along: figure out how to make Chara let him die. You’re not ready, but no one ever is to go….wherever.

Wherever human souls go when they die.

Wherever you…

You...

Wait a second.

Waaaait a second.

You close your eyes and go check something suddenly scary and increasingly important as you nod seriously toward the funeral objects to cover up your dizziness.

 

_Mettaton’s face cracks a little, something sincere peeking through as he watches Papyrus leap elbow-first into the wreckage of the piano._

“ _Thank you,” he says, looking down into his own drink, which he hasn’t actually touched. He looks very good holding it, however. “I really think whatever you're doing...it’s helping.”_

“ _I didn’t do anything,” you say earnestly enough._

_He looks back up at you, seeming extraordinarily surprised by that._

“ _You’re doing it now,” he contradicts incredulously. “I-I don’t mean to be rude, but-” He cuts off, peers at you very sharply for a second before his silvery eyes snap back to the shenanigans._

“ _You truly don’t understand,” he says quietly, watching the antics and barely moving his lips. You just wait silently, because you have no idea what the fuck he could possibly be talking about._

“ _May I speak frankly?” he asks after another minute or two._

_That thing again._

“ _Sure,” you say, then add, “of course.” You don’t want to seem to flippant about it, because it’s a serious question coming from a monster. Which you’ve always assumed he is, despite his mechanical body. He certainly acts like one._

“ _You love them,” he whispers. “As do I. You treat them with compassion, and you hope for their happiness. That’s all that_ can _be done for them, and is coincidentally the only thing that will help. That’s rather convenient, wouldn’t you say?” You cut your eyes at him. He looks gracefully impassive, almost bored holding his untouched drink, with an index finger resting idly on his opposite cheek._

_He’s not._

“ _I want to tell you something, because...” he glances at you subtly. “I think you can_ relate _.”_

_You don’t know exactly what he means, but you know what Papyrus means when he says that sort of thing. You nod cautiously._

“ _You know this body was made by Alphys,” he says quietly._

_You nod again._

“ _My… body doesn’t_ have _any physical substance,” he whispers motionlessly, and you understand him perfectly. “The reason for that is...because. I didn’t come from… where other monsters come from. Neither did my cousins, and they didn’t-” A quiet sound, a sigh, maybe? “It doesn’t matter,”he adds unnecessarily. “Just know that I didn’t come from where monsters usually do.”_

_You swallow dryly, take a sip of your drink to cover your discomfiture. Your heart slams against your chest once, then does an odd little dance while you breathe through flared nostrils. Was Mettaton...human? At some point??? What the fuuuu-_

“ _But when I… get tired,” he says, using a euphemism you don’t like very much, but it is what it is, “...I will join them.” He nods towards Papyrus, Undyne, Alphys, Sans._

_Not Frisk._

_He’ll go where monsters go when they die. Which for some reason you’d assumed was nowhere, then stopped thinking about it because it had upset you too much. You know they don’t...persist after death._

_Apparently you’d been wrong about something, and you still don’t know what._

“ _How is that possible?” you whisper, astounded._

“ _I don’t care,” Mettaton answers easily._

_It’s...wow._

_Wow._

“ _How can you know that?”_

“ _I just do,” he answers just as easily. “I am telling you this… because I think you can relate.”_

_He turns and looks at you, smiles softly. Then he holds out his drink, which he hasn’t touched._

“ _Cheers,” he says with a gentle smile, and your eyes spill over._

_He’s just letting you know as a friend (family; a close relative now through the brothers)_

_that you don’t **have** to **go** anywhere_

_If you don’t_ want _to._

_You can’t deal with_ this _at_ all _, so you don’t remember yet._

 

You jump, because someone’s clapping you on the shoulder just easy enough that it doesn’t hurt, but it’s a close thing.

“Doing it the _human_ style, huh breh?”

It’s Aaron nodding at you in smug approval, because of course it is.

“Um...” actually, that’s a really good excuse. Good thing Aaron’s almost as much of a human fan as Alphys and Undyne, although you’d gotten the impression the novelty (or just the reality) of humanity’d worn off a bit for both of them. Aaron, not so much.

Aaron’s also hanging around near the jukebox in hopes Sans will get tired of this playlist at some point, and he can put on the Blookhouse remixes of gyftmas music he’d probably been playing before Sans came in to watch the bar.

He’s been known to cruise pretty hard for humans; in fact, Aaron’s got a bit of a rep in Ebott, although it’s not a bad one.

You wipe your eyes and try to absorb that little suddenly-a-memory less obviously, then nod at Aaron.

“Yeah, I’m, uh… sad they’re gone,” you try, and it works. He nods smugly at his own knowledge of humanity, with a dash of condescension at your insistence that they’re “gone”.

You really _can_ check, can’t you. You pant with elation and fear; Aaron pats you on the shoulder again. There really _is_ something about being at Grillby’s that makes shit easier to deal with, isn’t there.

You feel suddenly cold; you wonder what happens if you check the… other direction. Because it’s not really a direction, is it? It’s all happening---

 

“STOP THAT,” Papyrus snips at you, annoyed.

He grunts a little as he grips a root; you hang on as tight as you can with your arms around his shoulders, legs shoved between his pelvis and ribcage piggyback style. His narrow iliac crests dig in the underside of your thighs even through his clothes, but endorphins take care of any joint pain you might be experiencing easily.

You swallow convulsively around your nausea as you see the blood coating his bare phalanges, drying and flaking as they work furiously to find purchase in the crumbly vertical dirt in front of you both.

“I UNDERSTAND THE TEMPTATION-” he pants with effort, “-BUT THIS _REALLY_ ISN’T THE BEST TIME TO-”

The root breaks.

 

\---now.

Oops.

“Are you hanging out with Aaron?” you ask Aaron breathlessly, glancing down at what he’s drinking while you taste your heartbeat and try to calm down. Seeing what’s in the glass provides another welcome distraction; you don’t know who it is but Sans has told you what it does. Aaron nods even more smugly; when you glance over at the jukebox, Aaron winks at you. Well, whatever Aaron gets up to when he’s not cruising for humans is probably nobody’s business.

You’re starting to get a better idea of why Sans’s blasé acceptance of “other Sanses” as a concept doesn’t seem to bother him nearly as much as it would you. For...several reasons.

You frown down at the table; one of the objects on it is actually clean. It’s some sort of antique plastic figurine; looks like a...plant monster? With a big mouth lined with teeth….? A big...mouth. Oh. The song.

Instead of being smeared with dust, there’s a bowl in front of it filled with something that looks like crackers. You lean in to peer inside, and see that each little disc has a spider stamped into it.

“You can eat those, breh,” Aaron whispers. “That what they _wanted_. ; - )” He snickers, rolls his eyes. “Especially by humans.”

Ohhhhhh god. Um. Oh.

You turn your head; Sans narrows his sockets at you lazily. He looks down at the table when he notices your expression, then his whole face softens.

He nods encouragingly, looks touched by your interest.

Fuck. Now you can’t not.

You’re surprised when your dead monster cracker tastes a little stale; you wonder how old they are. It’s not bad, just kind of… dry?

“Thanks for the uh. Comfort?” you say to Aaron, and it works. Human ritual completed. He swivels off back to the jukebox with a swish of his tail, drinking about half of what’s in the glass before handing it over to Aaron.

You go back to the bar and sit before any more impromptu holiday excitement decides to find you. Sans is still all soft in the face, and he even swipes his sleeve under his socket before looking back at you.

“i can’t eat em,” he admits after a minute. “they wanted it to be human food.”

Oh, that explains the staleness then. It’s not upsetting your stomach or anything, so you assume whatever they’re made of is like hardtack; lasts forever, more or less.

“Muffet’s pretty talented, huh?” you comment, and he nods, wipes his eye again.

“paid her ten times what she asked for that,” he whispers softly. Huh. _He’d_ paid for Muffet to turn that dust into whatever you’ve just eaten is. Apparently that’s someone Sans knew quite well; if they were a regular here, it’s no wonder. And they must have been if this is where the objects are being displayed, although they’re not usually there.

“And she still doesn’t like you?” you say wonderingly, and you win a surprised chuckle with that one.

“only monster cook who doesn’t. probably cause a my exceptional taste,” he quips, winning a laugh from you in return. Then you blush furiously, realizing that’s actually kind of a dirty joke, isn’t it. Yeesh.

“speakin’ a monster cooks, paps still hasn’t forgiven me for updoggin’ him last year,” he grins, granting you a merciful change of subject.

“It _was_ one of the more brutal updoggings I’ve seen,” you agree easily. Then you feel soft all over.

“Sans,” you whisper in astonishment. He leans in reflexively, looking concerned.

“We’re making _memories_ together,” you hiss sincerely, getting all teary.

He makes you want to be soft. So soft.

His face gets almost as wobbly as you feel, and he slides right up onto the bar, lies down sideways so he can wiggle over and curl up on it around where you’re sitting like a schlubby croissant.

You put your arms up on his side and lean over to close off the space between you, dark-secret-safe, and put your face against his; the humid heat generated by you getting all emotional makes the space you’ve created here on the countertop smell more like bones. And ketchup. And another smell you’re realizing is what he’d described as ‘human’; it’s just you. You sit there and cry a little, breathing in the smell you and he make combined together.

It’s been such a hard year, but a good one. More good than bad, and you can’t regret paying more than you should have for it. You don’t know where you’ll go once it’s up, but who knows. Maybe you don’t have to go anywhere.

You might change a little, but you already have.

More than you thought was possible.

… _Sans, you_ _ **know**_ _you’re not allowed on the bar until I’ve cleaned you,_ Grillby intones as he appears suddenly through the fire door. He straightens his vest with a tug as you sit up sharply. He doesn’t sound angry, or even seriously annoyed. It surprises you, since most of the time he manages to fake it pretty convincingly, no matter how good of a mood he’s actually in. What you will subsequently assume is the reason for that exits the fire door behind him; Craig just slurms nonchalantly over to Lola’s booth as Grillby saunters back behind the bar.

Al _righty_ then. Mystery solved; apparently Grillby doesn’t just go with Sans anymore. Not that whatever they were doing together in the back is any of _your_ business. You look down at Sans with wide-open eyes and raised eyebrows, do your best not to laugh. His gentle and sincere confusion makes it even harder not to. He shrugs, then turns over onto his back and holds his arms up demandingly.

“bowtie’s an improvement on the mustache, i’ll give ya that,” Sans observes quietly, and you resign yourself to never understanding anything ever again.

Grillby manages to make his annoyed crackle-sigh sound a little more sincere this time; he flickers, then disappears briefly as he darts into Sans for one of his “hugs”. Then you snort, because faster-than-light phalanges went to work during that literal second of distraction, and Sans hops down off the bar wearing Grillby’s glasses.

He takes your hand and starts toward the door; you slide off the stool, bemused as hell.

… _You bring those_ _ **back here**_ , Grillby crackles, mortally offended.

“have a good one, grillbz!” the world’s spiciest spectacled skeleton calls blithely, waves without turning around. He looks ridiculous, so you take advantage of _his_ moment of distraction to snatch the glasses back off his skull, then toss them back toward the bar as quickly as you can with the best of intentions. Your aim isn’t even that bad for a change.

The soaring spectacles flicker right through Grillby’s head and shatter a glass on the shelf behind him.

… _That didn’t_ _actually_ _help_ , Grillby crackles calmly.

“Byeeeee!” you yell, and Sans lets out a startled yelp-giggle as you yank him through the door and let it slam shut behind you.


	54. [heartache]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I posted a sidefic chapter while this one was still brewing. It’s holiday-themed papyton that may or may not include ruffle-butt underwear, the lord of the dance, Grillby pretending to be what he thinks a stripper is, gilded lilies, and more information about what goes on in Papyrus’s weird little mind (and body) than anyone is likely to be comfortable with.  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/17952167/chapters/44154844
> 
>  
> 
> Radiohead – Fake Plastic Trees  
> https://youtu.be/n5h0qHwNrHk

It’s the second day of gyftmas, and you open your eyes to predawn light and Frisk’s shadowy bulk leaned up against the wall near your pallet. They almost look like they're listening to something, even though by now you know they’re not.

You move and groan a little; their eyes lurch away from nothing and settle on you.

They start to say something, hesitate, then finish their gestures. “I’d wait a little bit to go in the kitchen,” they say.

You just wait.

“Mom and Sans are fighting,” they elaborate reluctantly.

You do you best to filter out the various snores and snuffles of everyone sleeping; well, everyone except Papyrus. He went out somewhere when everyone else settled in for bed, once again eschewing what he considers sloth. You’d finally realized that the communal nightly sleeping is part of the celebration because none of the monsters except for Sans actually need to sleep that often. It’s an indulgence, just like the food and drink, the gifts and the closeness.

You can hear Sans’s low rumble in a way you haven’t in a long time: pitched so you can’t understand what he’s saying. After a beat of silence, you can hear Toriel’s higher, musical tones answering.

Neither is yelling, and they don’t sound angry as far as you can tell. You also know that doesn’t actually mean anything. You exhale slowly, look at Frisk steadily.

“Do you know what they’re arguing about?”

Their eyes dart away, and they hunch in on themselves in a way you recognize.

Ohhh.

They’re arguing about Frisk, or at least that’s what Frisk thinks.

“I can’t understand what they’re saying,” you inform them, and they sag a little even though they probably figured as much.

You get up, head to the bathroom. You’d left your meds in the kitchen, but you still hear them going and just give up and climb back in to your little pallet. Frisk just sits there sadly, so you pat the blanket next to you. They manage to look about ten years younger than they are despite their size as they clamber in next to you, and you pull another blanket over them with a little pat.

Neither of you feel especially sleepy.

“Why do you think they’re arguing about you?” you ask eventually.

“They don’t argue like… it’s almost in code,” they gesture sadly. “They’ll be talking about bikes, or jokes, or houses… but I know that’s not what they mean.” You have a hard time imagining that, but after a minute of thinking about how they both talk, especially to each other… you find you kind of _can_ imagine it.

“Do you know why Sans and Toriel broke up?”

Frisk’s face slides into their impassive expression, and you sigh. Oh, well. It was worth a-

“Sans left because of me,” they gesture expressionlessly, surprising the shit out of you. You can hear them having their presumably coded argument in the kitchen, and you still can’t understand a word of it anyways. “Mom wanted to… she knew he knew why I’m _like this_ ,” their expression slips for a second and their eyes glitter, “but he wouldn't tell her.”

“If she was the one who was angry...why was he the one to leave? Did she ask him to?”

Frisk looks miserable but they continue anyways.

“Sans and I used to fight… for _real_ ,” they twitch out hesitantly. “We hid it from her, but she always knew. We both had the… the nightmares, too. He left because the way we were made Mom upset, even if she didn’t…” They trail off. “It hurt her a lot when we fought. Sometimes we didn’t even _do_ anything...but...we could barely stand to be around each other.” Their face twists enigmatically. “He wouldn’t even look at me. Half the time he acted like I wasn’t even there.” Their sigh has a weird little hiccup in the middle. “And so I _made_ him, because it made me…”

Their impassive mask cracks for a moment; they just look like a confused, heartbroken kid. “It made me _so mad_ ,” they gesture, like they can’t figure it out. Then they rub their nose vigorously, give one of their odd little huffs.

“So he took himself out of the equation, because I was ‘just a kid’,” they conclude as the blank mask creeps back over their features. “Even though I’m not.” They wipe a tear quickly before it can sink into the pillow. “I never was.”

You frown for a second. Frisk’s murky concepts about their ‘real age’ notwithstanding, their body and brain still function like their apparent age. You do a little math; Frisk would have been...about thirteen? Oh….geez. That is... _not_ an easy age for humans to be, and you can imagine even Toriel might have been slightly unprepared for _this_ kid going through puberty. And Sans….hoo boy. You’re sure Papyrus, and maybe even MK were a handful; neither come anywhere close to Frisk’s level of issues. Not just their soul...issues. But the fact that they’re in an unprecedented position of power and responsibility as ambassador, being a interspecies adoptee, powers regarding the whole ummmm unhappening and annihilation thing, the whole total amnesia before being trapped in a pocket dimension thing, and...well. The list goes on, doesn’t it.

But you still doubt that’s really why Sans and Toriel split. It's probably just the environment in which it did.

“Do you actually _know_ that’s why, or do you just think it?” you ask them slowly.

“What else could it be?” they gesture, nonplussed.

“Kids always think it has to do with them,” you inform them with gentle gestures, and they look back at you blankly. “It’s not...” you sigh. “It’s just how _human_ brains are in kids,” you try, and they look baffled at first, then thoughtful. “It’s a physical thing, no matter how… complicated other stuff might be for you.” Okay, looks like they hadn’t considered that.

“You can’t imagine people’s motivations not involving you until you get a lot older. Even...” You decide to leave out the part where that might not be developed fully in Frisk even now. They’re… what? Twenty one? Close enough, since you know their birth certificate is falsified too, and they were just guessing. “Even you might have missed something,” you say instead. “You know they’re both very...secretive.”

They’re quiet, then nod hesitantly. Huh. Looks like the unprecedented appeal to the fact that they’re physically human might actually have gained some traction.

“Does Sans ever talk to you about what happened underground?” you try, and their gaze grows hooded again.

“Not if he can help it,” they sign bitterly. This is close to some of the things Frisk won’t talk about either despite having already told you, but you don’t point it out; maybe they’ll be honest with you for a change. The weird atmosphere of predawn on a holiday seems to be doing some mojo on them. You too, maybe; everything feels very blue and quiet.

“Does Sans know I know?” you gesture in the dim, grey space between you, listening to the household sleep, listening to Sans and Toriel argue in their mild, friendly tone of voice. Frisk knows you’re talking about how Sans had killed them 348 times, Frisk had killed him 8 times, and subsequently annihilated those timelines. That whole thing.

Frisk sighs, wipes a tear.

“Maybe, maybe not,” they answer hesitantly. “It’s hard to tell with him.” They look even sadder after a minute. “Especially for me. I could never read him at all.”

You sigh heavily. “c-h-”

Frisk reaches out to still your fingers, staring hollowly at nothing. “Don’t say their name here,” they explain after they let go, which takes longer than necessary. You nod, then just pat their hand comfortingly instead of asking them anything else, then sigh and roll over, decide to see if either of you can get some more sleep. But that awful little human brain of _yours_ just keeps on churning.

You know in a lot of ways Frisk is culturally a monster. They don’t have the same sort of embarrassment about bodily functions a lot of humans do, refer to humans as “them” most of the time, and they tend to categorize their relationships the same way monsters do. Which makes sense since they were raised by and with monsters, and don’t remember anything before...the underground. And apparently Chara has been a part of them, or...part of their soul...for as long as they can remember.

You also know why Frisk left Toriel’s house to stay with Sans and Papyrus most of the time instead, because Papyrus had told you.

For some unfathomable reason, Frisk had tried to show Toriel their soul. To show her _Chara_. The more time goes on, the more you realize just how inappropriate something like that would be, even if Frisk’s soul wasn’t...complicated. Despite that, you _can_ think of reasons people, even family members, might need to expose their souls to or near each other. Vulkin hadn’t been particularly embarrassed to help you with your soul issues; she’s definitely pulled it out for you, and seen it as well. And you know now that many other monsters have helped humans similarly, for medical reasons, and possibly other ones. The reasons and intentions seem to matter a lot more any specific acts, as far as you’ve been able to tell, or been concerned… and seeing someone’s soul isn’t the same as...looking. And looking or not isn’t as important as _why_.

If fact, you’d...well. You and Papyrus had done a bit more than that. But you certainly don’t remember any specific feelings (or noises) either of you may have experienced due to various intimacies you’d engaged in for specific purposes (and sometimes things just feel good and that isn’t anyone fault). Despite the fact that apparently there’s no taboo, sexual or otherwise, preventing you from doing (something like) that (with Sans’s brother), and Sans certainly...knows what you had….eh. It’s _still_ not something that’s…

You sigh at yourself, stare at the ceiling and stop thinking about it.

Whatever it was, it’s still nobody’s business.

But Frisk trying to _force_ people to look at their soul… that’s not even close to acceptable, especially considering how awful it had felt when they’re tried to do that to you. It must be even worse for monsters, considering the differential in impact it can have on them. Obviously Toriel had _stopped_ them from doing it somehow (pulling them into an encounter? Who even knows). But Frisk had decided on their own it might be better to stay with the brothers for a while, who already know about Chara. Presumably to avoid having that happen again until they stop doing things like that, or have better control over how they get when they’re...like that. Whatever that had been. Because they definitely don’t want Toriel to know… well, several things, probably. That they’d murdered Toriel and everyone else underground at some point, that they can unhappen things, and/or that their soul is apparently...haunted? by her long-dead child.

Honestly you don’t know why they hadn’t just told Toriel the truth long ago. Yeah, it sucks. But they’ve caused exponentially more problems for themselves and each other overall by keeping so many toxic secrets for so many years. And now you’re enmeshed in all of it with them, aren’t you.

Frisk might know that you know why they left Toriel’s, and have their own feelings about that. Or they might not.

It’s no wonder you’re still sleepless when Sans finally turns the corner out of the kitchen, but he stops when he sees you and Frisk awake and sharing the pallet.

“didn’t wake you up, did i?” he asks quietly, scratching at his cervical vertebrae.

“Nope,” you sigh amiably enough, and he shuffles slowly over as you sit up, suppressing a groan. But you’re not as stiff as you were last year, that’s for sure.

“turns out santa’s comin’ today, ‘stead a tomorrow…” he informs you both, a perfectly placid expression on his face. Oh. Apparently Asgore’s going to be making a return appearance. He smiles, sockets listing lazily as his eye lights drift to the side.“…cause of the kids coming over and all,” he says out loud; “That murdering piece of shit,” his fingers twitch out. He goes iridescent when he sees your eyebrows lift, shoves his hands in his pockets.

You glance at Frisk, and either you can’t read _them_ at all, or they have no idea what Sans just said.

You sigh, plaster on a smile of your own.

It’s a fucking holiday all right.

“Can you go get my meds?” you ask Sans, and he nods. He looks relieved you didn’t mention what he said, and slightly embarrassed. When he comes back with your meds he hands them to you, then lies down heavily right in the thin line of space between you and Frisk, making you both frown at him in mild annoyance as you’re shoved back slightly. He blinks sleepily at both of you, the waggles his hips to loosen the space between you.

You swallow your pills dry, then glance at Frisk. They shrug, lie down, and cuddle right up to Sans with a sigh, eyes shut before they’re even completely horizontal. You press your lips at him as he returns your gaze blandly, then deliberately shuts his sockets and lifts his arm expectantly. Your plastered-on smile softens despite you; he really is a total ass in the best possible way sometimes. You give in and lie your head down on his bony little shoulder, lean up to pad it with a corner of the blanket, then settle in to get another hour or two of sleep.

“Alphys!” Undyne yells; you all jump, even Sans. “Wake UP! I had the ICE CREAM CONE dream again!”

***

The kids and Ange arrive by the time everyone else is awake. Well, returned in the case of Papyrus, or _make their appearance_ , in the case of Mettaton. Who is apparently going to be joining you all for Children’s Day. You don’t mind; in fact, you feel oddly closer to him after your suddenly-a-memory …reincorporated? yesterday.

He looks softly bemused by how your eyes follow him, but he’s certainly not bothered by extra attention. He’s also unexpectedly charmed by Nattie’s more highly developed yelling and bossiness since the last time he saw them; he looks a bit confused as to how exactly he found himself carrying them around on his hip as Papyrus demonstrates what “snow-chucking” is, and Undyne boisterously demonstrates what “Papyrus-chucking” is halfway through. Maybe you should let Mettaton know Nattie’s been taking Papyrus lessons off the clock, too; you imagine Mettaton’s found himself blustered into all sorts of novel situations by that particular skillset’s originator over the years. You smile to yourself; Mettaton and Papyrus’s matching knee length green sweaters are adorable. Papyrus’s scarf, gloves and boots are all black, printed with red stars; Mettaton’s boots and gloves are green glitter, just like his eyelids.

MK and Frisk don’t have matching outfits, but they’re cute anyways.

Everyone looks great, actually. Even you.

You’re wearing the slightly off-center sweater Undyne made for you this year; it’s got hot-glued trim all around that you think might be what’s holding it together. It’s also got big, deep pockets on either side; there’s no holes in those at least, and you can really appreciate that. It gives you a metaphorical warm feeling that she made you anything at all, and it gives you a literal warm feeling that she had someone imbue it with fire magic that keeps you warm despite the gaps. Alphys and Undyne’s sweaters don’t match, but they’re both adorned with gigantic bows.

Sans has already made himself scarce when Asgore shows up in his Santa costume; Toriel stands sentinel over it all much like she had the year previous in her long green dress, looking very stately. You’re still pretty sure that Asgore’s attendance, however brief, is likely what they’d been arguing about this morning. You’re also pretty sure Sans had been the one who hadn’t wanted to bring a serial murderer of human children over to play with two human children he’d decided at some point are...to some degree...his responsibility? Or something. It seems so unlike him, but you know it’s true. His relatives are also yours now, and yours are his. You'd felt it. Maybe it’s one of those ‘i can’t do anything about it but I don’t have to watch’ type of things. Whatever. You’re not going to let it rain on your parade.

Toriel, who many more personal reasons to dislike Asgore than Sans as far as you’re aware, merely watches him play his role and entertain your sister’s children with a neutral expression on her face. Well, she is a queen. You suppose she’s had plenty of practice pretending to be fine around people she hates.

“I’m guessing there’s some kind of drama going on there?” Angie asks you idly as she notes Sans’s absence, Asgore’s sheepish expression under the fake beard, and Toriel’s slightly narrowed mouth and eyes when he speaks to her.

“You could say that,” you answer obliquely. “How did the thing with Matt’s family go?”

“Also dramatic,” she sighs. “But this is way less boring, everyone’s better-looking, and the tree’s actually real,” she grins.

She always makes you laugh, and you’re happier than ever she’s here.

***

Toriel hums to herself happily as she carefully rolls out the pie crust. You wonder how on earth she manages not to get her fur embedded it in. You're just hanging out in the general vicinity, leaning your butt against the counter, enjoying the warmth in the kitchen, and placing whatever objects she requests into her flour-coated fingers.

“It is so nice to have children for gyftmas again,” she says in her musical voice. “And I have you to thank for it.”

“Um,” you grin a little, not sure exactly what the right reaction is to a statement like that. At least you know why she’s so odd about children now, considering how many she’s lost over the...years.

“They’re having a lot of fun,” you say, and her serene nod makes you feel slightly better about your social skills.

The kids are in the living room playing happily with their little trinkets and talking with their mom about what they’re going to spend their tiny bags of G on; the roughhousers have remained outside, and Mettaton’s undergoing another costume change, as far as you know. The low, vaguely medievalish music’s on again, although this year so far there’s been significantly less drinking.

Sans still hasn’t reappeared, even though Asgore left an hour or so ago. You wonder if he decided to take a nap somewhere since apparently he’d been up early and Undyne’s excitement had prevented further slumber, although you don’t really know why he’d need to go anywhere for that. Or...hmm. You’d gone to sleep early the night before, so you don’t actually know if he’d even gone to bed at all, do you? You’d gotten used to the past few months of Sans sleeping with you nearly every night; you even find him there with you in the morning sometimes on days when he’d still been at work when you’d gone to sleep.

“Sorry if this is a weird question,” you say slowly, and Toriel smiles indulgently. “But… how often do you need to sleep?”

“Need to?” She frowns, leans into the rolling pin a little more. “Hmm...perhaps twice every week? Sometimes every other day, if I have been exerting myself exceptionally.”

You exhale slowly, nod.

That’s the thing. Monsters only make sense in the contexts of their relationships, and before Sans had started sleeping with you…Oother than the naps which he can’t entirely control, when you’d first met him he’d slept about as often as Toriel does. Because he doesn’t really have a benchmark for ‘usual’ amount of sleep.

Monsters are all different, and his brother doesn’t sleep at all.

Frisk has told you that Papyrus used to complain about Sans’s sleeping habits almost constantly; now you think you know why. He sleeps so much because of Papyrus’s mistake (inexperience, but he feels like it was a mistake), and if Sans _stopped_ sleeping so much, maybe it would feel like less of a mistake.

And Papyrus doesn’t know that’s what happened, after all. He just _feels_ it, and there’s nothing like a guilty conscience to get you to criticize others… especially those closest to you.

Nobody’s perfect.

And that’s the thing about people. Sometimes they behave in the ways directly opposite of what you think. Especially towards people who remind them the most of the things they don’t like about themselves.

Toriel rolls out another pie crust, spending hours baking for the people who’ve been lying to her about so much, hiding everything important about themselves from her for years. Her arms are always open for them, but they rarely find themselves filled. Whether they’re afraid of her judgement, being rejected, or hurting her, it amount to the same thing from her perspective. Avoidance, distance, loneliness.

“Do you ever get tired of being the mom all the time?” you whisper softly.

Toriel goes still, looks down at the bowl of pie filling. You’d watched her dice up the snails, which you’d been informed are not sapient. These ones weren’t, at least.

“People do not stop needing their parents once they grow up,” she says, soft and musical. “I did not, even though...” she trails off, but not before you get a strange wash of unimaginably ancient loss, a shivery tension in the air.

You didn’t know not-skeleton monsters could have not-okay vibes.

She glances at you more sharply than you expected, then sighs.

“Children often forget their parents have lives outside of their roles as caretakers,” she continues in her soft, musical voice. “Someone who is a mother to many may be a queen to others, a boss to some, was a child herself once...” she gives you a slightly ironic glance, “...may even be a lover to one, or a dozen. Those who think of her as a mother first may make those same assumptions.” She winks, and you blush. Then she glances sadly down at her handiwork, rubs at the spot where she’d pushed too hard with the rolling pin and tore through the tender pastry.

“Of course I get tired,” Toriel whispers. You feel chided, somehow.

“I do _not_ get tired of caring for others,” she says, slow and implacable. The music of steel, the tones of stone. “That is what makes me _less_ tired.”

“Gotcha,” you whisper in response, and a strange, nostalgic smile crosses her face as she stares at her own flour-coated hands. You’d wipe her tear if it wasn’t for the fact that you know better than to do that uninvited now, so you hand her a clean dishtowel instead.

“Thank you, my child,” she says, almost as ironically as Papyrus might have.

***

Sans is sleeping between one of Papyrus’s five-foot evergreen arrangements and the wall the next time you go into the living room. He’s sleeping under the table while you all eat dinner, and he’s loitering facedown on the couch when you all head back to the living room to wait for the pies to be done for dessert. You put a hand under to encourage him to turn on his side, then join him horizontally as everyone blathers peacefully for a bit, letting him be the little spoon as your own eyelids start to get heavy. Eventually he turns back towards you, snaking an arm underneath and the other over you to get extra cuddly; it’s making you blush a bit but you’re pleased anyways. He tucks his skull into your shoulder with a heavy sigh, then shivers in a way that can it felt but not seen when you pet it with your hand gently.

The roughhousers and the kids regain their energy relatively quickly since even big holiday meals don’t weigh you down when they’re monster food, and Mettaton joins Ange, Alphys and Toriel in the dining room for tea, leaving you and Sans flopped on the couch.

“Did you end up going to sleep last night?” you ask idly after a while of listening to the indistinct chatter from the other room, and thinking about nothing in particular.

“mmm?” He wiggles against you, like he’s trying to get even closer.

“Sleep,” you repeat. “Did you do that last night?”

“mmm...” You’re leaning up on your elbow and lying on your side with your fist under your cheek; he whuffles around in your armpit, making you giggle quietly. Weirdo.“lil bit. why?”

You shrug. “You just seem extra tired today. You didn’t even eat dinner.”

“wasn’t hungry,” he sighs, heavy and...wistful? You notice his breath feels a bit hot, don’t think much of it. Then he tilts his skull back, and the points in his sockets coalesce big and fuzzy when he opens them; his teeth are parted as he gives you a look so blatantly sexual the blood rushes into your face almost painfully.

“wanna get outta here with me for a lil bit?” he rumbles; his voice is deep, suggestive, and the opposite of quiet.

“Good _lord_ , Sans,” you whisper, glance reflexively at the other room which has fallen a bit quiet (Alphys might be tittering, actually), then back at him. The look falls off his face, replaced with iridescent discomfort as Nattie hollers something bossy at MK very near the window you’re lying beneath.

His eye lights flicker.

“sorry,” he whispers, like he doesn’t know where that came from.

“You’re acting weird,” you inform him bluntly, then sigh. Rub his back a little.“Let’s go _talk_ somewhere.”

He looks unhappy about it, but he nods. Reluctantly.

You both sit up then get up; when he holds out his hand you take it and shut your eyes. When you open them you’re in the dining room at back at your place. You go put on some tea while he sits at the table and stares at it, then you come and sit too once it’s ready.

“So why are you so cagey today? I’ve barely seen you.”

He makes a small buttface, shrugs a little.

“don’t like asgore,” he answers shortly. “figure you know why.”

“I get why you don’t like Asgore,” you sigh impatiently, lift your eyebrow. “I don’t get why you’re acting weird.”

He rolls his shoulders slightly, glances at you sidelong.

“don’t like it when he says that stuff to tori,” he says quietly after a minute.

“Huh? What stuff does he say to her?” you ask, baffled.

He sighs heavily, grin flattened with disapproval.

“sad sack shit. acts pathetic, like he wants her ta feel sorry for him.”

You exhale slowly through your nose, rest your cheek on the backs of your curled fingers. You’re not impressed.

“You’re kind of acting like a human man,” you say bluntly. “It’s not cute.”

He looks exactly as offended as you hoped he would. It’s _not_ cute, and it’s stressing you out.

“It’s stressing me out,” you add, and his face falls. You just look at him blandly before continuing. “How exactly is _their_ beef your beef?”

His hands go in his pockets; his posture just sort of melts until he’s sitting on the middle of his spine instead of his pelvis. It’s not petulant; it’s actually a good sign for him. Less of a defensive posture.

“it’s not,” he exhales eventually. “sorry for acting weird.”

“Frisk said you and Toriel were arguing this morning,” you reply instead of acknowledging his apology. He doesn’t look happy about that either, but not in a way that resents you. More in a way that he knows his uppance might be a long time coming, but it’s finally here. You’re not angry, either. More that you feel like you’re about to choke on all the weird secrets fermenting around everywhere with everyone. You’re tired of his deflections and avoidance, and there’s something he needs to say to you still.

Isn’t there.

He’s slightly iridescent, sitting on whatever it is like a rotten little egg. You rub your fingertips over your forehead for a minute before continuing.

“I could hear you talking, but not what it was about. Frisk and I talked while you two were doing whatever you were doing, and they have the usual complex kids have when their parents get divorced. They think it’s all because of them.”

“me n tori weren’t married,” he points out. “but… think i get what you’re saying,” he sighs heavily, then shakes his skull. “i don’t like asgore chumming up ta human kids. you know why. tori jus’ wanted to enjoy herself s’much’s she can cause she likes having the kids over, told me to take a hike if i was gonna make a fuss. so i did, but it put me...outta sorts.” he looks embarrassed again, so you ask a question quickly.

“Is that what you were arguing about?”

“we weren’t arguing,” he sighs.

He’s telling the truth.

“…Oh.”

He looks at you, gives you a sad smile.

“she wants to know how frisk’s doing, cause they don’t talk to her bout important stuff anymore,” he says, and there’s something cracked and heartsore behind his quiet rumble. He shakes his head again. “an’ i don’t know what to tell her half the time. cause me an frisk… got our stuff,” he finishes, sighs explosively.

Well, apparently he can do this all day.

And will.

Might as well get to it, then.

“Why did you and Toriel break up?” you ask quietly.

He sits there like a sack of bony potatoes, stares at the floor for a while.

You let him, and eventually he speaks.

“’m the one that left,” he mumbles miserably.

“I had gathered that,” you sigh. “But… that doesn’t really answer my question.”

“nope,” he whispers.

You wait some more, drink your tea.

“me n tori never learned how ta talk about the important stuff in the first place,” he says eventually. “jus’… spent time. took care a frisk. had some laughs, lotta good times,” he adds, voice dwindling to a whisper. “but…we let too much go, or never...got around to talking about it. didn’t….talk.” He still doesn’t say it.

Monsters have other ways of making sure important stuff gets communicated, but they’d never done that. He’s been very direct about that. Unusually so, even for him, because there's a reason they never did.

“She wanted to see your soul, show you hers,” you say, and he flinches. “But you didn’t want to?” He goes still, stays that way.

“It’s more complicated than that?”

“she knew frisk had a lotta problems,” he says eventually. You start to feel annoyed, but then you really look at his face. He’s still not looking at you, but he is actually trying to explain something important. Huh. So this has something to do with it, although you can’t imagine what exactly. Or...wait a second.

“she’s used to that, though. seen it before, how kids are when they been hurt before,” he rasps quietly, wipes his face with a sleeve since he’s sweating a little. “they get violent, or...do weird shit. that photo i showed ya while back.” The one with everyone’s faces scratched out, including his and Toriel’s. “other…stuff.”

Have nightmares and wake up screaming, or violent. Go on frightening and cryptic diatribes about murder. Try to force people to look at their soul.

“i wouldn’t talk about it. and she didn’t...” he sighs painfully. “she knew there was stuff she didn’t know bout, but she knows more than she says. lot more, i think. all that still might not a mattered, but...”

“You and Frisk hurt each other,” you say, and he flinches again. “And you wouldn’t talk with her about it?”

He shakes his skull sadly.

“And you wouldn’t show her your soul.”

He covers his face with sleeve-wrapped hands, shakes his head again. Makes an odd, dry noise.

“was it because of… how you get when you don’t… feel right?” you try.

“told myself that for a while,” he whispers.

This still isn’t what he needs to say to you, is it.

His legs come up and his feet settle on the chair. He wraps his arms around his knees, pulls up his hood. Sets his forehead on his legs.

“grillby thinks i left tori cause i didn’t want her to see it… and i didn’t. never let her see me,” he says, voice shaking with shame.

“I thought monsters don’t have those kind of expectations.”

He’s quiet for a few minutes.

“they don’t.”

You think you might actually have to figure it out on your own by the time he speaks again.

“but i _wanted_ to,” he admits softly. “even...with that i mighta been...” He shudders. “doesn’t matter now.”

You wait, and your heart bleeds cleanly.

It’s okay, though.

It’s washing something out.

“real reason’s one you already know. you don’t say anything to me bout it, but i _know_ you know.”

He makes another dry noise.

“real reason’s cause i _killed her kid_ ,” he hisses, shaking with misery. “she lost _all_ her kids, and i...how the _fuck_ could i _show her that_??”

Oh shit.

“killed _our_ kid,” he whispers, shaking until he clacks. “killed em over and over til they killed me, then _chara killed everything._ ” He just sobs quietly for a minute before continuing. “and that piece jus’ came snapping back from the beginning and stuck itself right in there. _you_ know it’s there...that fucking _flower_ knows it,” he sobs quieter now. “when he says that shit...stuff _i_ said then. ‘m not like you an paps, but it makes me...” he sighs. You know. “i don’t _remember_ , jus’ feel it. and… that ain’t all.”

He sets his chin on his knees, and you watch the pips n his sockets slowly fade out into darkness.

“… i know what i did. even if i can’t remember. even if it was...some other me. i can’t _not_ know.”

Magic slides down the grooves under his sockets for a few minutes, then he hides his face again, rubs it across and weeps quietly.

“at some point… i’m still the kinda person who’s _capable_ of doing something like that. killin’ some lil kid, _my_ kid. whatever they did doesn’t matter.” he heaves a dry sob. “’s like you said, someone who ain’t _like that_ would never do it.”

Well, shit.

“‘m jus like asgore, killing those kids to get us outta there. she doesn’t deserve that again, being close like that with someone who kills kids. killed _our_ kid. nothing makes a fuckin difference, cause… there _is_ no difference. i don’t care, anyhow.”

“Frisk killed you, too,” you whisper hoarsely. “And Toriel, and...everyone.” you swallow dryly. “She probably killed Frisk too, right?” You think about what Frisk had said. “Frisk said everyone except Papyrus did at some point,” you add, and he hunches in on himself even more. Maybe you shouldn’t have said that either.

“doesn’t matter,” he breathes, lets out a little hiccup. “i _know what i did_. she doesn’t, and she didn’t need to see that in me. woulda told me to go to hell, get out. and i’d a deserved it, so … i left. so she didn’t have to go through that.”

You sigh. He’s not telling the truth; he doesn’t _know_ that, you don’t even know if he really believes it.

What is true is that he was afraid, and he still is.

“i see it sometimes,” he rasps unnervingly. “…taste it. me and frisk killing each other over and over for nothing, frisk killing everything til there _was_ nothing, cause…”

He tilts his face back up, goes utterly silent as his eye lights pin and dim.

Utterly still.

He stays that way for

a

long

time

…

then he coughs roughly, stares out of blank sockets.

You feel a little dizzy.

“Sans?” you whisper. “What’s-”

“did it for nothing,” he rasps, something edged and terrible in his voice. He sees something, but it’s not anything here.

He sees something else; something he’s never seen before?

“…for nothing.” You can see the edge of his crooked lower teeth as he pants shallow and scared.

No. You know exactly what he’s feeling, you know what the expression on his face feels like from inside it.

He figured something out, and he desperately wants to be _wrong_.

“...place where there’s nothing,” he whispers, and the words carve him sharper than knives.


	55. [megalovania]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> uh oh  
> [discussion of childhood sexual abuse; violence, gore]  
> Deadboy And The Elephantmen – What The Stars Have Eaten  
> https://youtu.be/mce_hZ5gKt4

It’s the third day of gyftmas.

The day adults receive their gifts.

You and Sans sit in the dining room at his place, waiting for Frisk to come to the table. Sans says he wants to tell Frisk about what happened to him.

He thinks it has something to do with what happened underground, although he hasn’t exactly...explained it. And it’s not like he hasn’t tried his best, but you can tell he doesn't want to go into whatever he’s speculating on, because he hopes he’s wrong. Because if he’s wrong, he definitely shouldn’t say anything to you about it.

He wants you to be there because you’re the one who remembers, even though you don’t anymore. He most likely suspects you could if you had to, and you don’t like to think about the fact that he’s right.

Frisk sits hesitantly, waits.

“gotta tell you bout something,” Sans says very, very quietly. “something that happened to me a long time ago, something i can’t remember anymore. it’s... not easy to talk about, okay?”

Frisk nods tentatively, then with a little more confidence.

“i don’t remember, but they do.” He inclines his head towards you. “you don’t need to worry about how. they told me what happened, and now i know.”

He takes a deep breath.

“someone hurt me real bad a long time ago,” he says eventually, grin flattened. “when i was just a kid. did stuff to me i didn’t want. made my body do stuff i didn’t want, made it… made me _make something_ i didn’t want either, didn’t ask for. was jus’ a little baby, and he did that to me. over an over, til i...” his voice chokes off.

Frisk’s eyes and mouth narrow until they look impassive. They aren’t. Sans just keeps looking at the floor.

“wasn’t easy, but i gave him what he had coming.” You wince; apparently he figured it out on his own. “then me an paps decided to… do what we had to. to make ourselves forget, cause… we couldn’t live with it. remembering what happened.”

Frisk makes a tiny, shocked noise. Sans either ignores it or doesn’t hear it.

“still can’t. s’why i get sleepy, n he gets confused sometimes,” he whispers. Frisk’s eyes shine wetly as they narrow even further; another tiny noise happens. Sans just sighs.

“but turns out...”

His thumb rasps magic out of the grooves beneath his sockets. One then the other, phalanges curled around it protectively as his hand gets tucked back in. Frisk needs a minute to compose themself as well. At first you’re not sure why that was the part that upset them so much, but then you realize. Something so bad _Papyrus_ couldn’t live with remembering it. Frisk goes on their camping trips with him, watches Flowey tell him the horrible things he’s done...which makes Papyrus _remember_ them. Then he holds hands with Flowey so he can feel bad for what he did...and now you’re realizing something else, too.

Frisk must have told Papyrus what they’d done at some point; maybe even for the same reason, maybe not. Which is why… he feels his death. What you’d seen(felt; remembered) when Papyrus had held your soul together with his hands, the bare bones that are more continuous with his soul than he’d like.

Integrity. The trait you and Papyrus share. Why Frisk telling you how you’d died...had made part of you remember it.

“turns out i can still _feel_ what happened to me,” Sans continues finally. After a minute his hand reappears. It shakes indecisively for a moment, then taps his sternum quickly. “can’t _remember_ , but i felt it my whole life.” His voice dwindles back to a whisper, and his hand clatters over his face rapidly a few times.

“did shit and i didn’t know why, all sortsa….” he shudders. “bad shit,” he says instead; his arms wrap around to hug himself. “fucked myself up real bad, okay? cause….i didn’t know why i felt like that. but then… they told me. told me just like i’m tellin you, and it helped me. gave me somethin to put there in that space.”

Frisk’s eyes glitter sharply, you can hear their breathing get shallow. Sans’s face collapses in grief.

“guess you know what kinda place i’m talkin bout.”

You feel sick, put your hand over your mouth reflexively as you stare down at the tabletop. Oh.

Oh, _no_.

“place where there’s nothing,” Sans rasps hollowly, “hurts all the time and ya don’t know why. like something’s screamin’ in there, trying to get you to hurt somebody, hurt yourself. cause it hurts _all the time_ , til you can’t feel anything else anymore. but when you try and find it… nothing’s there.”

“Sans-”

He shakes his head sharply, but something behind his eyes cracks a little when he meets your gaze.

“you don’t have to stay,” he whispers. But he wants you to. He doesn’t ask, but you know he does.

You nod; he wipes magic from under his socket again. He takes another deep breath.

“but they told me what it was, and it helped.”

Frisk doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything.

Sans’s phalanges rattle over his grin once, twice.

He doesn’t look at anything in particular.

“i know what happened to chara,” he rasps faintly. “don’t know bout frisk, but it’s something.”

Frisk wraps their arms around their middle in an echo of Sans’s posture, leans over. They don’t make a sound, and their eyes are hidden by their hair.

“she _doesn’t know_ you feel it,” he continues with more strength. “she only told me cause it all happened a long time ago, an chara’s _dead_ , okay? been dead and gone a long time. toriel _doesn’t know._ ”

There’s a high whining noise, but they nod eventually.

“wanted to let you know, because… see if you want me to do for you what they did for me. tell ya what happened, put something in that space. you don’t have to decide-”

“I want to know.” Frisk’s hands slash adamantly, even as their breath pants shallow and scared.

Sans’s eye lights flicker, fade dim and tiny.

“…kid.”

They stare at each other, and the atmosphere suddenly crackles with an awful tension.

Sans pants faintly; he’s scared too.

“you gotta take some time, think about-”

“I have the _right to know_ ,” they interrupt, eyes glittering even through their fringe of messy hair. “You don’t get to decide that.”

San’s teeth part crookedly, and his sockets narrow against their words like a scouring wind. That unnatural stillness creeps into his body, and Frisk gets visibly upset. They take a long, shuddering inhale; make a strange little grunt. Their hands come up to speak, shaking.

“I feel it,” they slash out; short, repetitive gestures right near their chest. The same place Sans uses to talk about where he feels it. “Tell. Me.”

Eventually, he bows his skull.

“asriel found chara right where toriel found frisk,” Sans begins. “just about dead, fallen down. took em home and tori healed them, but there was some stuff that didn’t come from falling. she looked through all those old books she’s got, tried to figure out what it was. thought she _had_ to be wrong, cause chara couldn’t a been more than nine or ten. jus’ a _little_ _kid_ ,” he rasps painfully. Scrubs his hands over his face, clacking rapidly. His arms come down, wrap back around himself.

He rocks a little; Frisk sits motionless.

Sans hides his hands in his sleeves and wipes his tears away quickly, shudders.

“Tell me,” Frisk insists tightly after a long time.

“someone forced chara’s body to make a baby,” Sans whispers hollowly after even longer; Frisk looks like they’ve turned to stone, their usually tawny face drained to sickly yellow. “maybe even more than once, but they didn’t have any baby with em when they fell.”

He weeps softly for a minute, hides his face in fists wrapped in sleeves. Manages to pull his hands down until they only cover his fixed, flattened grin before continuing.

“someone made em have a baby even though they were just a baby themself… and they took it away. they _stole it_ , and treated chara like they were trash left over,” he sobs, wipes at his face absently. “left em all alone,” he whispers tightly, then cuts off the high, wordless whine that comes after once he can hear it. “so they jumped in a hole ya can’t get out of, cause they believed em. ate poison when it didn’t work, cause they couldn’t stop believing em.”

Frisk makes an unfortunate sort of noise.

“No,” they sign adamantly.

“sorry, kiddo.” His voice is broken, and his whole body sags. “m’sorry.”

“No,” they repeat. “That _didn’t happen_.”

“happened a long time ago,” Sans whispers, looks at them dead on. _Looks_ dead, even though he’s shaking. “longer even than i been around, okay?”

“ _No_ ,” they sign again, and more unfortunate noises come from Frisk’s bulk, bent low and leaving just enough space to sign. “I won’t let that have happened.”

Sans is sobbing harder now. “can’t do anything bout it now, kid. can’t change it. happened way too long ago, even _you_ can’t make it unhappen.”

A low growling noise gets louder and louder; when it turns into a scream Frisk explodes out of their chair towards Sans.

His eye flashes and fingers twitch; Frisk flies into the wall hard enough to shake the house. Papyrus’s painting falls from the wall; you can hear something crack that might not be fixable. You also realize you’ve already stood, backpedaled until your back’s to the wall just as firmly as Frisk’s, hands over your mouth.

Sans bends forward, lurches to his feet with a sob. His pink house shoes make a soft shuffling noise during his unhurried approach, the right one scuffing louder because of his fused ankle.

“i think we killed each other enough already, pal,” he hiccups softly, rasping tears away from his face as he ambles heavy and reluctant toward them. More appear immediately, but he ignores them. “think we can figure out how to stop hurting each other, too?”

This isn’t an encounter.

It’s not anything you’ve ever seen or heard of, and you don’t know why it’s possible.

Frisk screams and writhes in rage; the air shatters with dissonance. It shatters again, nothing colliding with nothing only to implode impotently. They can’t do anything about this. They can’t unhappen something that never happened to them, that happened to someone long dead and gone before they were ever even born.

All they can do is scream, and _feel it_.

Feel it burn a slow hole right through them until there’s nothing left.

Frisk’s hand shakes and rises like they might be trying to say something. Sans doesn’t do anything but watch warily, lets it happen. Then their fingers scrabble at their chest suddenly, eyes glittering like coals as they let out a cracked shriek. Sans unravels instantly, exists with one hand clutched so tight around Frisk’s wrist you can see where the points dent in. You realize now why it’s so scary; you know he literally exists everywhere at once all the time, but when he does that you can also _see it_.

“that’s why you tried to show her, huh?” There’s more venom in his voice than you’ve ever heard there before. “too scared to tell her, tried to _show_ her how you killed me. or was it her? killed all of us, then tried to show her _what you_ _really_ _are_. you _never shoulda done that_ ,” he grates icily.

You flinch when you listen to it from the opposite direction; the blizzard howls empty and lethal.

Sans _should_ have showed her, and never did.

He’s too scared, and he ran away years ago.

He’s still running.

“i’m tryin to _tell_ ya what you’ve been askin’ me in the hall for almost thirteen. fuckin. _years_ ,” Sans rasps, punctuating each word with a little shake of his hand. His eye flashes again as Frisk struggles, roars down into his face in disbelief. His fingers twitch; they slide down but stay stuck to the wall except for their hanging head, bellowing impotently.

“ _i don’t need to look at chara to see what you did_ ,” he hisses, leaning in until his frontal bone touches Frisk’s forehead, shoves until he pins it to the wall with a thud. He’s not afraid now, even though Frisk’s trying to kill him.

He’s _pissed_.

“i see it every time i look at you. _i know. what. you. did_ ,” he pants evenly. There’s another flash of eye and hand; Frisk kicks and squeals in outrage, then again in pain. Something else that flashes dangerously clatters to the floor, slides under the new fridge. He doesn’t let go of Frisk’s hand where it shakes and flexes. You hear a wet noise; Sans flinches with a growl but doesn’t back off.

“go head. spit in my face,” he continues. “never stopped tasting it. i can still see you cuttin his head right off, throwin it down like garbage. that’s why he covers it up, so i don’t hafta see that when i look at _him_ , too.”

Sans pulls back; his left hand lifts and falls, and Frisk crashes away from the wall onto their knees with a cracked shriek, blood running from their nose and mouth. Sans puts his face to theirs, finally lets their arm go. Brings up both hands to hold Frisk’s head steady.

“tryin to tell ya, you’re _still my kid,_ ” he cries, shaking uncontrollably with rage and grief.

“always gonna _be my kid_. an ’m _never gonna stop loving you_ , okay? love you, frisk. love you, chara. okay?” His voice cracks apart, gets louder as he frees a hand.

“never stopped loving you, no matter what you did, no matter what i did to you. doesn’t matter. all that matters is that _nothing_ you could do can make me stop loving you, cause **you already** _ **did it all!**_ ” 

He screams like a swarm of locusts, his voices gathering and buzzing as he shoves his face against theirs, forcing them to look into his sockets and panting breathlessly.

“ _ **you’**_ _ **re**_ _ **.**_ _ **doing**_ _ **. it.**_ _ **RIGHT. NOW**_ _ **!**_ ” 

His penetrating shriek gashes the air; his words carve themselves dripping as they tear right through the fabric of reality, punching through timelines the stars have already eaten like an arrow charmed to find its mark. 

He staggers and swoons like his words cut into him too, saves himself with a fist tangled in Frisk’s unkempt hair. He uses the grip to pull their head back sharply, then crushes their faces together as he inhales the killing rage right out of their lungs with a strangled gasp. 

He yanks them apart, throws his skull back  while sickly- shocking  red tears leak from his  empty  sockets, face twisted  into an  unrecognizable  horror except for his fixed grin. 

 

Sans screams poisoned, wordless agony from his **SOUL** , and 

 

the

 

universe

 

**b l e e d s **

 

for

 

its

 

sins.

 

Your stomach tries to escape as the tsunami made of all his voices unleashed at once scours through you; the only thing that stops it from emptying itself is the fact that it’s already empty. You stagger into the table, bruising yourself and retching hoarsely; a few drops of blood patter down on its surface.

You don’t _know_ how many irredeemable creatures dropped dead when he made that sound, in this world or the next.

You just _feel_ it.

A heavy freshet of blood leaves Frisk’s mouth; their forehead meets Sans’s again with a thunk that makes you wince, and shaking phalanges scrape their way back to holding Frisk’s dazed, panting expression between them.

“you _know_ what you did… and _so do i_.”

It’s a tortured moan.

“so why the _fuck_ can you think it’d be something that happened _**to**_ you would make me not love you anymore?” he roars brokenly into the child-soft face held tight in hard bone fingers, gives it a shake. “how can ya think that, frisk?? none a that was your fault, you didn’t do what happened _to_ you, okay? didn’t ask for it. didn’t ask for _any a this_. and _i didn’t either!_ ”

His voice tears itself to eviscerated shreds, then just keeps _existing_ like that.

“we didn’t ask for any a this, but _**here we are, an**_ _ **d**_ _ **i love you**_.” He sobs dryly, sags forward and wraps his arms around Frisk’s bulk, wrestling them into a hug as they flail, emitting a thin wail of despair.

“ _ **you’re. my. kid.**_ ”

Frisk shrieks tonelessly, tugs at the faded blue sweater hard enough to make Sans stagger. Their face is smeared red with blood; Sans’s face is smeared red with something else.

“can’t give you _justice_ , frisk,” he wails, heartbroken, “cause i got here too late. ‘m sorry! _you_ can’t make it unhappen, an i can’t _make it right_ ,” he hisses regretfully, rubbing his face into Frisk’s rat’s nest of wild, choppy hair.

“can’t fix it,” he sobs. “can’t make it better, and i wish i could. i’d _do it all again_ ‘f i could jus’ _fix it_ for you, okay? if i could stop it from happening, if i…. coulda _protected you_ like you needed, i’d do it over an over til i got it _right_ ,” he rasps, voice cracking. “ _i would have._ you gotta know that,” he groans; his arms clutch at them as they rock together a little, just side to side easy and slow. He sets his chin on their hair and strokes the back of their head over and over, making a high keen of grief that raises gooseflesh on your arms.

They eventually slide to the floor like cruelly used marionettes, strings mangled by love and hate.

After a long time Frisk pulls back just enough to sign, and Sans’s eye lights come back just enough to see what they say. His hands stay on their shoulders; the space between his teeth hangs askew. His sockets are narrowed against the shared pain of hating what he can’t change, the injustice that wounds him even more than his own voice, the helplessness that carves him deeper than Chara’s knife.

“But you’re not too late _now_ ,” Frisk gestures weakly, a high whine that they can’t hear escaping as they exhale. Sans’s sockets widen as the rest of his face sags as much as it’s able. “You _take care of me now_ , even though I’m… like _this_ , and I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve for you to protect me,” but Sans is already shaking his head at them. Phalanges release their shoulders to dab at their face; he speaks words they can’t hear but understand anyways.

“you _do_ ,” he whispers adamantly as he wipes their tears, then pets at their baby-round cheeks in an odd but noticeably practiced way. Whatever had come from his sockets before spatters his blue hoodie black; more adds itself as his tears start to wash it away from the bones of his face.

“s-same as me,” he manages as his breath catches. Can shock be soft? “we all gotta take care of each other, okay? gotta love each other til we can _believe_ it. okay?”

You stagger a moment, scrabbling at the wall behind you.

Then...

You go back and check.

“ _Time alone cannot change us from having been children who were hurt very badly,” Papyrus signs with bare fingers, the weeping lump of Frisk in his lap as he stares at the wall._

“ _Time is like fire; it can wound or nurture. Frisk hates that they cannot change what they have been. In order to grow, in order to get better, they must learn that they can become_ _ _more.__ _That they can make_ _ _room__ _for Chara. In order to learn that, they must let go of that hate. I am not as patient as my brother, but I believe in Frisk and that is enough.”_

“You were never meant to kill Frisk,” you whisper suddenly, and Sans’s head shoots up, pips in his sockets pinned on you in surprise.

“That’s just what _he_ wanted,” you add, realizing. Sans knows who you mean from looking at your face. “He made you believe that in a way that shouldn’t have...been possible, but… _this_ is your job. You’re their parent, and you’re… this is how it’s supposed to be, as much as it can be, after...after what happened.”

After what Frisk did.

They know what they did, and so does he.

 _This_ is what Sans is for: to take care of them, to nurture and advise. To protect patiently until they can heal, to hold them accountable for the harm they’ve done in the wake of harm done to them.

Not to forgive or to punish, like Frisk has been trying to get him to do for a long, long time.

Many of the things Frisk has done are unforgivable, and punishing them doesn’t help anyone or change anything.

Neither of those are justice.

He’s here to make them _learn_ , show them how to address the harm they’ve caused, and to change how they behave in the future… by making them see that they _have_ a future, and are bound to honor the fact that they do. Bound to spend most of their time making as many people as possible come to terms with having a future too, and embrace it no matter what it looks like. He’s here to make Frisk ready, and Frisk is here to make humanity ready. To change them a little; show them something good about themselves.

Even if it’s different.

He’s forcing them to acknowledge what they’ve done, and understand themself. No matter how much they hate it, they have to accept what they’ve done, and the hurt they’ve caused.

_They know what they did._

Neither of them are perfect. They’ve hurt themselves and each other a lot, in this life and in many, many others. And they have to make it up to each other somehow, make it up to everyone.

They have to break the cycle of harm.

They have to do _right by themselves_ , and if they don’t know how, they have to learn. If it’s impossible, they have to _invent a way_. If they come up short, they have to change and learn until they don’t. If the world they come from is kill or be killed, if the world that came after makes it impossible for them to save each other and themselves, then the answer’s simple.

They just have to change the world.

They have SAVE it.

No matter how long it takes for Frisk.

No matter how many times Sans has to try.

“This is justice,” you say slowly, awed. “ _ **It’s never too late for justice.**_ ”

You’re telling the truth.

Sans’s teeth close again. He looks back down at Frisk who’s still kneeling there, bloodied and dumbfounded. He looks at them a while, pets their hair and face gently, thinking hard.

“want you to have something,” he says quietly, and your eyebrows hit your hairline.

Sans lets go, takes a step back and rummages in his pocket. He pulls out the canister with The Stuff in it, sets it on the table. Frisk goggles at it, looks at Sans in bafflement.

“s’what alphie needs ta do what you want,” he explains shortly, and they somehow manage to look even more surprised, then their eyes narrow in thought. After a second their eyes fly back to Sans in unadulterated shock.

His body made something he didn’t want. Didn’t ask for, but here it is.

“it’s for chara,” he adds quietly, rasping magic away from his face. “cause i can’t give back what got stolen,” he grits out, “…and cause i love em,” he adds more softly. “you’re my kid. no matter what… no matter what happened. i love chara, and i wanna give em what they want. let em try and hold on to something.”

Frisk finally staggers to their feet, but only to grab Sans’s hoodie and tug him over to the chair he’d vacated earlier, and when they sit in it they pull him over into their arms, up on their lap and just sort of...enfold him. They hunch up, tuck their faces in. Start rocking a little, comforting each other.

Eventually you remember that you also have the extremely precedented ability to sit in chairs, so you do that. Fold up your arms on the table and watch Sans and Frisk rock together, Sans sometimes whispering quietly, Frisk weeping likewise.

You stare into the silvery glow and think about Papyrus. Opening his arms again and again, even if he knew that time it’d be nothing but the knife. Offering his friendship, even to a murderer. He’s never forced anyone to do anything, and never will.

He’s all of a piece; he knows he has never and will never kill anyone.

He has the bravery to offer everything he is, no matter how many times it takes for them to learn better. He too was once a child who was hurt very badly, and he’s afraid he might not have ever stopped being one.

He’s afraid that he never learned how to be a child properly, so he doesn’t know how to grow up either.

So he just does the best he can.

Sans isn’t as brave as his brother, but that’s okay; no one is. No one could ever possibly be, just like no one will ever be as patient as Sans.

He’s not doing nothing; he spends every moment of his simultaneous and infinite existence doing the only thing that matters. He’s _infinite_ , but he’s also more than that; he exists in all places at once, and he knows time is an illusion. 

He never gave up at all.

He’s just playing the longest game there is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did a color drawing of the fight scene: https://www.deviantart.com/gildedpleasure/art/domestic-megalovania-795843181  
> Not embedding it or anything because it's slightly upsetting.
> 
> The "check" is Chapter 23. Feel free to reread if you enjoy crying.


	56. [home]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Your love](https://youtu.be/8K0qCCfeMAE)  
> Is better than ice cream.  
> Better than anything else that I've tried  
> And your love is better than ice cream  
> But everyone here knows how to cry.
> 
> Your love  
>  Is better than chocolate  
>  Better than anything else that I've tried  
>  And oh, love is better than chocolate  
>  Everyone here knows how to fight.
> 
> And it's a long way down  
> Yeah it's a long way down  
> It's a long way  
> Down  
> to  
> the  
> place  
> where  
> we started from.

It’s the fourth and final day of gyftmas; Toriel’s fridge is full of chocolate, and her freezer’s full of ice cream. It’s the day you’d missed last time, the day where everyone eats only sweets from dawn til dusk.

“Why do you always keep your chocolate in the fridge, Toriel?” you ask absently. When you look at her after a few beats of silence, you realize once again it’s one of those things that people do for reasons that hurt and heal at the same time.

“Someone I once knew liked it that way.” Her mouth twitches into a smile that softens the longer it stays in place. “They said it was cold and hard...like their heart,” she giggles softly.

You lean into the fridge; you’re pretty sure she means Chara, and if your expression’s weird you’d rather she didn’t see. Of course she’d spent years living with Sans and has known him even longer, so you’re sure it’s a tell anyhow, but...it’s the best you can do.

On a happier note, it’s early enough that you are the only two awake so far, and seeing all that chocolate gives you an idea.

“I was...wondering if I could make something for today?” you ask hesitantly. “It’s like a soft candy, sort of.”

“Of course,” Toriel replies easily. She’s often helped you make versions of dishes you already know with monster food ingredients substituted, and one of the ways you’ve gotten to know her better over time. “If we don’t have what you need, I am sure we can find an appropriate substitute, as we usually do.”

You nod excitedly. “I want everyone to be able to try it, and I want to make a special batch for Sans, too,” you explain. “I need, um. It’s pretty simple actually. Chocolate, peanut butter, margarine or...coconut oil?” she nods, “and a whole bunch of powdered sugar. Like five cups.”

Toriel points wordlessly to two massive sacks in the top shelf of the pantry.

“Good deal,” you sigh, satisfied. “It’s magic, right?” She nods again with a raised eyebrow. You give her a sheepish look; of course. She’s probably been preparing for this for at least a year, and she knows the skeletons can’t eat it otherwise. Apparently you’re still a little groggy.

You measure out 3 cups of peanut butter into a bowl, then just melt the cup of margarine since you find it easier that way.

“Even humans who don’t eat anything that comes from animals can have these,” you muse absently, then pour in the first of five cups of powdered sugar. “Hmm. I’m gonna add some salt too, actually. Do you-” she plops it down next to you with a wink; you add about a half teaspoon to balance out the sweetness.

“Technically it is magic. I have been told the same dietary restrictions do not apply.”

“Hmm,” you say thoughtfully. “Well, as long as it’s all magic, like...if the brothers can eat it, I’m pretty sure even allergies wouldn’t even apply for humans. But otherwise you’d have to ask people individually, I guess,” you muse, huffing a little with the effort of your stirring as the filling thickens up. “Like...if it started out as part of an animal, even if it...turned?”

Toriel just smiles enigmatically.

“Phew!” you say, finally satisfied with the consistency. “Okay, now I need a littler bowl for the side batch.” She provides it, then you cover the big one and put it in the cold fridge to chill.

While you’re in there, you take out some of the extra-dark chocolate; that’ll be a bitter, intense coating for the small batch.

“This is going to be special for Sans,” you whisper conspiratorially, and Toriel gets a wicked-sweet look on her face as she titters quietly.

“It does make playing pranks on him challenging,” she admits. “It took quite some time before I caught on to his… preferences.”

“Papyrus spilled the beans, didn’t he?”

“He did,” she giggles, covering her snout with furry fingers as she blushes. “Sans was very convincing at pretending he did not like garlic and vinegar flavored candies for quite some time.”

As you fill bowls with chocolate and coconut oil in preparation for the main batch, Toriel putters around in the pantry, sniffing and mumbling to herself. It’s so peaceful, and you feel well-rested.

Right now is a decent place to be for a change, so it’s not too surprising you’re here.

 

When Frisk and Sans had gotten done making up after their terrible fight at the skeleton household, Frisk had put the canister Sans had given them away in their room somewhere while you and he talked quietly for a minute. When they’d returned, they and Sans had made a cursory attempt to clean each other up a bit. They’d both needed to change clothes, but even after they’d done so, Frisk’s nose and eyes were still swollen.

Then they both came over to examine you; apparently you were looking a bit rough yourself. Frisk had already come back having picked out some clothes from their closet despite the fact that you have your own clothes there, while Sans had done his best to clean the blood from your nosebleed away.

“You can just have those, okay?” Frisk had gestured at you sheepishly. A gift; their way of making a conciliatory gesture. You’d accepted them with a hesitant nod.

They’d shrugged with a weak smile, and Sans had held a bare hand out to each of you.

He’d brought you back into the living room; luckily the only person in there was Papyrus, sitting with his knees apart and his gloved hands folded between them like he was waiting for you.

Knowing the brothers, he probably was.

He beckoned toward Frisk with one hand and they’d plodded over to him, flopped down on the couch, and laid their head right on his sweater-covered femur, eyes already shut.

Papyrus had looked at Sans for a long, steady time; Sans had slowly nodded. Eventually. Papyrus closed his sockets and let out a slow breath; he seemed neither pleased nor displeased. Just...accepting.

“I MAY TRY… SLEEPING TONIGHT,” he said unexpectedly, then opened his sockets again. “...IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE HOLIDAY SPIRIT.” When you glanced at Sans, he seemed oddly...touched? Relieved? You’re not sure, but when Papyrus’s other arm raised he shuffled over, flopped down and tucked his head into his brother’s chest as he leaned in against him. Then the world’s tallest living skeleton set his sockets on you, tilted his skull slowly to indicate the spot next to Sans.

You’d smiled weakly and joined them.

After a while, Toriel had wandered in and given a little start as she’d seen you all huddled there. Her face grew unfathomably sad as she noticed Frisk’s face, which still bore the marks of weeping and whatever Sans had done to injure them. Used his magic, you supposed. They’d injured him too, but his wounds were a bit more internal.

She’d already been turning around to leave when Sans spoke.

“me n frisk had a fight,” he whispered softly. “sorry.”

She turned back around, furry white fingers touching the base of her throat absently. Can shock be soft?

“Have you...reconciled?” She asked in a whisper. She seemed astounded that he was actually being honest about it, even that much. It made you sad, but in the way only seeing too little, too late actually mattering anyway can. Clean sadness, not bitter.

“yeah,” he answered. You didn’t turn your head to look, but a very-still Frisk seemed to relax in your peripheral vision. “yeah, we worked it out. sorry,” he says again.

You get the impression he’s apologizing for more than the fight.

“Oh,” she whispered, breathing going funny for a minute. “I… there is dinner left if you would like some.” She glanced down, rubbed the base of her throat again. You’d dropped lids over your gaze to give her privacy, and yourself as well as your eyes filled sympathetically.

Old habits are just as hard to break for Toriel, apparently.

“’m good. thanks, tori.”

You didn’t hear anything else for a long minute; nothing until the door as she went outside to stand sentinel over the remaining roughhousers for a bit. Someone to make sure no one got hurt in the absence of Papyrus; someone to make sure to soothe it if they did.

 

You look up when Toriel sets several bowls in front of you with an easy grin. A good night’s sleep can do anyone a world of good, even if you're a seven foot tall goat angel.

“These may pique your interest,” she says in a conspiratorial whisper.

They do.

“This one is the beetle powder, right?”

She nods and grins harder.

“I was going to add it to the bitter chocolate,” you explain, “make it spicy. Will that work ok?”

“I do not see why not. Although… I would add it after the chocolate and coconut oil are already melted together. It loses its flavor slightly when heated for too long”

“Sounds good. What are these ones?”

“A very sour fruit. This is shrimp paste, and those… well. They are difficult to explain. Try it, perhaps?”

You take one of the little white balls out of the bowl and put it in your mouth; the flavor is mild but…

“It’s fizzy.”

She nods.

“Hmmm….”

You try one of the little dried fruit shreds, and uhhh wow. That is fucking _sour_ , almost like pure citric acid. Perfect.

“I’ll use the balls and the fruits inside,” you decide. You skip the shrimp paste, since you don’t want to have the smell in your hands all day. You mix them in, set them in the fridge to cool as well, then get started melting the big batch of semisweet chocolate by microwaving it in a bowl. Once it’s ready, you stir furiously until it’s smooth, then take the filling out, roll it into little balls, and start dipping them with a fork. Toriel sets a long pan covered in baking paper next to you, and thank her with a nod.

The repetition's soothingly hypnotic, and your mind drifts as you dip, roll, lift, and set each ball into rows.

 

Frisk had stayed with Papyrus as evening became night, but you and Sans decided to go get cleaned up better than you’d had time for before. Plus, you both just kind of wanted to have a little time alone in a pleasant setting. Not that being downstairs with everyone was _un_ pleasant, more like you both found yourself in need of a little TLC.

He helped you wash your hair, and even let you brush his feet for him; you managed not to tickle for once. You talked quietly here and there, but not about the events from earlier. You’re already on the same page about most of it, and neither of you are ready to have an in depth conversation about possible fallout from his decision to rock the boat after all.

After a bit in the bath you and Sans found yourselves clean, close, and still heartsore, so you’d drained and refilled the tub with fresher, hotter water. The quiet intimacy soothed you both more than talking, and you didn’t want it to end yet. You’d summoned your viewer with a little wink, spread it to float near the counter and flicked your fingers at it to start the playlist.

 _Last night I dreamt_  
_That somebody loved me_  
_No hope, no harm_  
_Just another false alarm..._

“wow,” he said quietly. “sounds like i’m rubbing off on ya.”

“That’s not the worst idea you’ve had,” you whispered against his skull, making him smile as you wrapped him in your arms to bring him with you as you leaned back to soak in the deep, solid tub. His arms came around to hug himself on top of yours, and you let your mind drift. You listened to the music together, rubbing your cheek on his skull as you slid your hands up and down radius and ulna, then sloshed underneath to stroke his ribs with the flats of your palms, too.

He stayed quiet, and so did you; oddly enough, it seemed to heighten the feelings of closeness. Even the usual clacks of his movements against the bottom and sides seemed muffled instead of reverberating through the water loudly. Toriel has four bathrooms, and that one’s your personal favorite.

You wondered what the tub’s made of to sound like that against bone, then dismissed the train of thought when Sans reached an arm up and over to stroke the nape of your neck lightly with hard fingertips, pushing his chest out invitingly. He shivered with pleasure when you pushed a finger into his intercostal spaces, and slid his other hand down into the water to caress the outside of your leg with a quiet sigh. He leaned back and set his head on your shoulder to gaze up at you through the steam, lovingly pained sockets overflowing in his broad face as you touched his sensitive bones in the hot water.

Glided along the lengths of the space between his ribs, then up along his sternum. Back down, then inside to touch his spine with your palm, rubbed up and down firmly. Checked for his nod, then pushed your palm down inside his pelvis too, rubbing his sacrum and even circling the tip of his tailbone with the pad of your middle finger.

He spread his femurs and presented with a soft exhale; you used the heel of your hand to rub the front of his pubis as his sockets narrowed. Touched with a light fingertip at the symphysis and got another nod, used the insides of your bent fingers to rub there the way he likes sometimes.

You got him moving his feet around for purchase to arch into your touch, but only succeeded in sliding further down into the water until both his arms came up to hold you loosely, hands joined lightly behind your neck. His sockets closed and he let his teeth part, resting his skull on the inside of his humerus; he shivered and sighed as little drops of his magic floated up to settle on top of the water, light-dark between the suds and glinting with subtle colors like pearly oil.

 _So, tell me how long_  
_Before the last one?_  
_And tell me how long_  
_Before the right one?_

He’d gotten loose enough that both his feet slipped and he slid down suddenly; you’d grabbed him in time to save him from a skull full of water, then he grinned and sat up. Satisfied with that, he’d urged you to switch places and coaxed you into his lap facing him. He smiled soft when you set your forehead to his gently, then touched you any way you seemed to like, which was all of them.

His bones in the bath felt amazing the way they always do, taking on the temperature of the water until they’re hotter than human skin. He spread his hands on your shoulders, let them slide slowly down your front with thumbs at the midline, tips curved in a little to watch the brief line of bloodless yellow follow them as he put pressure on your skin. He got to your face and spent a while just cradling your cheeks, stroking gently to let the heat soak in. His thumbs caressed your lips lightly as he pressed hot, smooth teeth along your jaw; you made a soft noise when he gave you a little nip there.

He sat up a little straighter and slid arms around your waist, holding you close against him to glide the wet texture of his ribs across your body the way you both like. The way that reminds you of when he wants to feel your soul’s rush or share his, and you both felt them humming soft and soothing inside as if they were listening to each other. The tips of his phalanges running down your back made you shudder with gooseflesh despite the heat, and he leaned back to run a hand down the front the same way.

He felt between your legs and glanced up questioningly, then started rubbing you there once he saw how much you liked it. You listened to the water slosh rhythmically in counterpoint with the jangly guitars, his other arm still wrapped around your waist and his face rubbing into your chest and neck affectionately until you had a nice little shiver of your own.

Afterwards you’d both rinsed with clear, warm water from the tap, standing to take turns pouring with a plastic cup as the tub drained.

Your third favorite part about Toriel’s place is the unbelievably massive bath towels that can wrap around you and Sans at the same time with room to spare, the size of the blankets you use on your bed-couch at his place. You rub a little fog-free circle in the mirror, then lean in to set your chin on his terrycloth-padded shoulder as you look at each other, pleased and sleepy faces exposed, hard bones and soft skin wrapped snug and safe together in the fluffy, clean towel.

“I’m ready to conk out, even though my hair’s going to dry all weird from sleeping on it wet,” you inform him softly.

He looks at you like he loves you, because he does.

“mm. s’cute when it does that… but i can still fix it up tomorrow if you want.”

His smile softens even more when he feels your heart give a little quiver, reverberating through where his spinal processes are pressed damp and bare against your chest.

 _The story is old, I know…_  
_But it goes on…_

 

Toriel puts the main batch into the fridge to cool, and prepares a few chocolatey treats of her own for later while you start experimenting with weird Sans flavors. The sun rises as you melt the chocolate for the coating, and you press the filling into little discs instead of balls so they’ll (hopefully) fit in his mouth without him having to smush them. The addition of the sour fruit shreds and the tiny white fizzy thingies doesn’t even make it too lumpy, and when you mix the spicy powder into the melted chocolate, it doesn’t change the texture noticeably either.

Your curiosity gets the best of you, and you put one in your mouth even though the chocolate’s still dripping.

“Oh, no,” you mumble in horror.

“What is it?” Toriel asks, coming over to peer at the bowl, then your face. “Oh dear, did you _eat_ one of those?? I will go get the-”

“It’s delicious,” you whisper. “He’s going to hate it.”

“W-what?”

“It tastes like a spicy peanut butter and jelly sandwich with popping candy in it,” you inform her sadly. “Dipped in chocolate.”

She makes a really weird face at you; maybe she doesn’t know what those things are. Then she takes one of the drippy discs and pops in into her own mouth, and her pretty goat eyes widen in surprise.

“I think…he will like it anyway,” she says thoughtfully, giving you a speculative look as she covers her mouth delicately with the backs of her fingers.

“Do you like it?”

Toriel looks at them, swallows. “I… can see the appeal, but I think it is...a bit… flavorful for an old lady like me.” She gives you a very kind smile, and you realize she thinks Sans’s unusual tastes have rubbed off on you.

The thought makes you giggle as you work.

Undyne wakes up while you finish filling the last tray, and Toriel helps get her started on her favorite type of candy.

“It is a simple rock candy,” she announces calmly, “although it must get to at least-”

“300 DEGREES!!!” Undyne hollers gaily, “and then you hit it with _hammers_!!”

“We must wait until it cools for that part,” Toriel replies, “but yes. Hitting it with hammers can be...satisfying.”

“Even Sans likes my candy,” she says pridefully. “Because it tastes like FIRE!”

“It tastes like cinnamon,” Toriel corrects with mock-primness. “A _great deal_ of cinnamon,” she adds, tittering at you again.

“We use _the juice_ ,” Undyne explains gleefully in her version of a whisper, crushing an invisible orange with her massive, scaly hand.

“Oil, but yes. Close enough.”

“The hardest part is not stirring once the sugar’s all dissolved,” Undyne adds. “But it makes it clumpy if you do that.”

You feel a little shiver of happy anticipation as the impending festive mood comes on like an avalanche. “This is gonna be banaynays.”

“Sadly, it can be difficult to acquire sufficient banaynays at this time of year for banaynay splits,” Toriel sighs regretfully, “but we can make do with banaynay ice cream in our root beer floats.”

“good one, tori,” Sans mumbles sleepily as he shuffles around the corner and clack-thumps onto one of the chairs at the kitchen table. That _is_ her idea of an unformatted joke, after all.

Toriel’s kitchen is massive; luckily there’s room enough for most of her massive family members in it since Papyrus comes too, a partially (or perhaps only potentially) conscious Frisk carried in on his hip.

His casual feats of strength are even more impressive first thing in the morning. The world’s tallest living skeleton is still doing his wake up socket-blinks at random objects as if they confound him, and Frisk snortle-sighs with still-shut eyes and cuddles into him peacefully, arms wrapped around his shawl-clad neck.

Eventually his sights set on the kettle and the french press they’d brought from home, and he muzzily goes about filling the kettle to heat.

“Hey, Papyrus, do you think you could make that a double?”

He turns to look at you as abruptly as if you spontaneously came into existence. Sleeping really does get him bent out of shape for a little bit when he wakes up; this was a much shorter duration than he’s used to, too. Maybe that was like a nap for him; like one of those humans who don’t nap because it makes them tireder. More…tired. Yeah, you really need some caffeine.

“NNNNNNNNNYES,” he says after a minute, then seems to perk up a little. “BUT SUGAR AND WHIPPED CREAM IS NOT OPTIONAL, FOR PROPER OBSERVANCE OF TRADITION.”

“I can deal with that,” you reply with a smile.

Sans pulls a pillow out of his pocket and throws it on the floor in front of his chair. He pulls out a comb likewise and tucks it in the little gap between his teeth on the left side, waits for you to meet his eyes and then points at the pillow implacably.

You sigh and sit so he can get started on your hair.

“Where’s Mettaton?” you ask idly, already getting vague again. You stifle a yawn on the back of your hand, too.

“don’t get me started,” Sans rumbles amiably, voice still low and rough from sleep. “think he’s getting dressed.”

 

Frisk and shockingly enough, _Papyrus_ had both already been asleep when you’d come downstairs after the bath, although you’d heard the buzzsaw noises from the latter before you’d technically even finished descending the stairs.

“How did he get to sleep without you?” you whispered to Sans in bafflement, but he’d merely shrugged and seemed unconcerned. Then he’d seen Mettaton artfully arranged on his back in his android form, hands crossed over his chest like Snow White in a glass coffin, hair spread artfully on a satin pillow placed directly over Papyrus’s pelvis.

“…wow. really?” he’d addressed the robot dryly after coming to an abrupt halt.

One of Mettaton’s silvery eyelids cracked open to skewer him with a sharp look.

“What? I doubt you were holding out for this spot yourself.” He glanced up at Frisk lying on Papyrus’s right shoulder, then more pointedly at the vacant left. “Although I suppose you’ll have to double up,” he smirked.

Sans gave you a betrayed glance at your snort.

“I guess your brother’s prime real estate tonight,” you’d grinned; Sans had given that an uncharacteristically petulant eyeroll, then flopped down at the designated shoulder and wrapped the limp bone arm around himself peevishly. You’d just shared a grin with Mettaton, then grabbed a blanket and pillow and cuddled up into Sans’s back contentedly.

It probably shouldn’t have surprised you that what woke you up so early in the morning was Mettaton pushing Sans’s weird bare skeleton feet out of his face for what definitely was not the first time, perhaps not even the tenth.

“Do you even need to sleep?” you’d mumbled as you sat up, blinking slowly.

“Of course not,” Mettaton said quietly, sounding rather aloof for someone with disturbingly long, clawlike toe phalanges tangled in his no-longer-perfect hair. “But I always embrace every opportunity to practice my craft.” He pouted a bit. “Is he even actually asleep?”

“Sans doesn’t need to be conscious for mildly annoying revenge,” you point out. And here you though they knew each other; longer than he and Papyrus, even.

Mettaton just quirk an eyebrow at you, so you look up to gauge the laxness of Sans’s grin.

“As far as I can tell, he’s truly out. You could just...get up?”

Mettaton looks offended. “And let him win?”

You shake your head over a lost cause, and now you’re all caught up, you suppose with a sigh.

 

Sans has to re-moisten and add some conditioner to your hair to get it to do the thing, but he still makes quick work of it. Angie is physically manifested by the fragrance of coffee, and Papyrus eventually puts Frisk down into a chair and sets theirs in front of them. This is apparently the correct Frisk activation procedure, and they begin to drain the giant mug eagerly.

The smell of cinnamon hits like a wall; Undyne rears back from peeking over the pot with her reddened eye streaming tears.

“YEAH!! Who needs coffee when you can just sniff THAT!! Hey, Papyrus are you gonna get in on this?”

“THE GREAT PAPYRUS DOES NOT REQUIRE SUBSTANCES TO BE AT HIS VERY BEST FIRST THING IN THE MORNING,” Papyrus sniffs, mixing something very vigorously in a bowl. And pacing through most of the house while he does so; he just happens to be on one of his kitchen laps at the moment.

The kids appear too, and of course they’re chipper as hell, although the adults manage to join them (including you) once sufficient caffeination has occurred.

“Where’s Alphys?” you ask idly after a bit, and you regret doing so when only Toriel’s quick reflexes save her floor from a puddle of 300-degree, cinnamon-laden molten sugar.

“There’s an anime-style gyftmas special that got released this morning, it’s apparently the first one ever?” Undyne explains as Toriel snatches the saucepan away. “Since the barrier was destroyed and all. It’s probably going to be hilariously weird, so she’s sending it to me too but she didn’t want to wait.” She grins ferally, then continues pouring the liquid into the tray lined with buttered foil. Toriel tries not to look too relieved as she slides the trays into the fridge to cool.

Then Mettaton arrives, and everyone has to get up for a minute so Papyrus and Undyne can move the table a few additional feet away from the corner to make room for Mettaton’s outfit. Well, you just let Undyne pull the pillow you’re sitting on along the floor so you don’t have to get up. She smells even more like cinnamon than the kitchen, and you smile and nod thanks.

“Good morning, my lovelies,” Mettaton crinkle-buzzes brightly as he slides in to the corner facing out, strikes a pose, and stays there.

“You look nice,” Shonda says with a smile, blinking sleepily from where her head rests on her folded arms on the table. “Did you make that?”

“It was a collaborative effort,” he replies smoothly.

Papyrus put down his mixing bowl long enough to start doing something unclear over by the pantry, and now you can see he’s attached a broom handle to one of those grabby tools Toriel keeps around for Sans to get things from up high if he wants to; he never uses it. Now Papyrus is using it to hand Mettaton a teacup filled with what might entirely be whipped cream balanced on a saucer, and everyone sort of holds their breath to see if it’ll work, or if the cup and saucer will shatter on the floor before it makes its way to Mettaton’s perfectly poised white-gloved fingers.

It’s Papyrus, so of course it works perfectly.

Papyrus bows as the kids clap, then snatches up his mixing bowl and resumes pacing.

“think you’re all set,” Sans rumbles agreeably from behind you, and Shonda stands to help haul you to your feet. You’d had to share, but sleeping near Papyrus has still done its magic, and you don’t even ache afterwards. Then someone knocks on the door, and Shonda springs up to go get it. You watch her hasty exit in confusion, then Frisk catches your eye.

“MK,” they sign with a grin, “with viewbooks.” Then they drain the remainder of their tanker-mug of coffee with a satisfied sigh.

Ahhhh. Yep, you already hear the bright chatter from the other room.

Nattie comes up to frown at Sans stolidly.

“You need to get your hair done too,” they announce.

His eye lights stay steady, even as his sockets narrow.

“k,” he agrees after the requisite staredown. “but you gotta take it easy on me. ‘m real tenderheaded.”

Nattie’s nostrils flare, but they nod wordlessly and hold out their tiny hand for the comb. Sans groans his way to his feet and produces the comb, but only hands it over after making a few territorial passes along his skull with it first. Nattie takes a seat and points to the pillow; Papyrus happens to be coincidentally passing by again, whisking something rapidly in an entirely different mixing bowl. His gloved hand leaves the spoon for the precise three seconds it takes for Sans to use it as leverage to lower his bony ass all the way to the floor without incident. The world’s tallest living skeleton hadn’t stopped his pacing for the duration of those seconds, so this has the effect of turning him to make a loop around the table, which he repeats several times before stalking back out to patrol one of the other rooms for a bit.

“You want braids or twists?” Nattie asks brusquely as tiny brown fingertips slide confident and exploratory over the utterly featureless top of Sans’s skull.

“mm,” Sans mumbles quietly, sockets listing as he drifts towards vagueness. Like a nap might be coming on. Well, you suppose it’s probably a fine time for it if so. “…braids.”

“I thought you were tenderheaded,” Nattie deadpans.

“mmhmm,” Sans agrees easily. “gotta give ya a challenge, right?”

“that’s up to you, isn’t it,” Nattie replies succinctly, and you and Sans glance at each other, impressed at the progress of Nattie’s Papyrus lessons.

Nattie summons their viewer, spreads it above to float above where they’re working. Shonda has her own now, which had gotten her to mostly shut up about the monster phone thing.

“I’m making an instructions video,” they explain mildly. “It’s for Vegetoid.”

Ahh. Their friend from school who has neither hair nor fingers, come to think of it.

“Are you going to explain what you’re doing? It’s a little noisy in here.”

They shake their head. “I’m not doing the sound yet.”

“Gotcha.”

You watch Nattie’s little fingertips turn pale with pressure as they press imaginary locks of hair against Sans’s skull firmly, using their middle and ring fingers to grip and add more hair as they go to hold them flat. They pluck the comb out of their mouth from time to time for parting a new row out, then continue to ask everyone mostly unintelligible questions with the comb in their mouth. They seem satisfied enough with the answers they receive anyways.

Frisk wanders off to the other room where MK and Shonda are still chattering brightly. You still haven’t seen Alphys; how long could that special possibly be? Well, you suppose as long as it needs to be.

“You sit pretty good,” Nattie says after a little bit. “You don’t wiggle or say ouch.”

“mmm?” Sans says as he wakes up. “oh. nah, i’m jus’ not sayin anything.”

Nattie frowns hard, unexpectedly thoughtful as they pluck the comb from their mouth yet again. You’re kind of glad Sans’s hair is imaginary; that doesn’t seem very sanitary.

Then again, that’s how Ange does it.

“My momma says you _always_ have to say something when someone hurts you, or does something you don’t like.”

Sans’s face does something both evocative and enigmatic; you only caught it because you were watching.

“she’s right,” he says after a minute. “sorry.”

Nattie drags the point of the comb along Sans’s skull to part the hair.

“guess my scalp’s not all that sensitive,” he adds after a few seconds. “maybe everyone else is jus’ too rough.”

“Oh,” Nattie says, and you see something flit across their face too, then settle into satisfaction. “Yeah, I’m good at doing hair.”

They both jump at the first crack of Undyne’s candy hammer, then everyone acclimates to the pounding (and yelling) fairly easily.

“you sure are,” he drawls lazily. “can’t wait ta see it.”

Frisk comes back in to search for any leftover coffee; they end up pouring the remains of everyone else’s into a cup and downing it, then start in on the dirty dishes.

“Are you a boy or a girl?” Nattie asks Sans after a minute.

His eye lights flicker; Toriel and Mettaton titter quietly.

“neither? m’ a skeleton?” he replies, a little confused by the question.

“My daddy says ti-ti only likes girls,” they continue, and you and Ange both sigh in unison. “But you’re not a girl, and they like you a lot.”

Sans glances at you wryly, a socket slipping shut. “guess everyone gets to be wrong once in a while.”

“i like plenty of people other than girls,” you can’t help but blurt peevishly. “i just don’t like-” shit, you were going to say ‘your dad’, but that’s _not,_ uhhh quick thinkofsomethingelseto-... “-men?” you say, and wince. That’s not totally true either, but it’s...complicated.

“Oh.” they frown. “Are there any men here?” Nattie asks wonderingly.

Papyrus reappears too, still pacing and stirring furiously. “METTATON’S?? RIGHT THERE?? OBVIOUSLY,” he informs the room in clipped tones, then makes a trail of something on the floor as he gestures with the spoon.

Nattie turns their head to look at the single-wheeled steel rectangle embedded in some sort of fanciful creation made of wire, cut-foil spangles, rhinestones, glitter, and several dozen polychromatic ribbons. You think that might be an Elizabethan collar in there. Made of tinseled pipe cleaners.

“It’s true. I’m an absolute paragon,” he buzzes; his words pass quickly across the ticker at the bottom of his display screen. Frisk uses the extended grabber to add a shard of cinnamon candy to the saucer balanced on his motionlessly poised fingertips.

“Thank you, darling,” he adds absently as they nod and head back out to the living room.

“Do you not like Mettaton?” Nattie asks you, frowning in thought.

“Not the way I like Sans,” you say honestly enough.

“NONE TAKEN,” Mettaton adds dryly. There’s a winky face at the end of his transcription, too.

“Oh,” Nattie says. “Okay. I think you’re all set!” They pat Sans’s shoulders very gently, and he actually pulls a hand mirror out of his pocket to give himself a prolonged once over.

“hmm...” he says. His sockets narrow judgmentally, and Nattie looks nervous for a second. “… _h_ _mm_.”

Sans tilts his skull back until he’s looking up at them upside-down; bare bone touches the wood of the seat with a tiny click.

“i love it,” he sighs regretfully. “here’s your tip.”

And he pulls out what has to be at least 50G and slips it into Nattie’ little hand with a grin.

Frisk makes a sudden reappearance, looking vaguely frustrated as they lean back against the wall.

“What?” you gesture, concerned.

“I can’t stand to hear another word about their fucking viewbooks.” Their hands slice through the air irritably just in time for Nattie to catch what they said.

“Language!” they holler, and Frisk’s eyes narrow. Then they reach into the neck of their blouse and produce a coin, place it on the pile already in Nattie’s hand with a sigh as you stand up quickly.

“huh,” Sans comments dryly, “if i wasn’t already a kept skeleton, i’d have to take notes from that lil scammer.”

You scoff at him, then tap a shard of cinnamon candy on his teeth on your way past, wishing it could actually shut him up as you make your hastening way to the bathroom. He parts them in surprise just enough for it to slip in.

“not exactly proving me wrong there, darlin’.”

You _definitely_ had too much coffee.

***

 

Once you’re done destroying the least adjacent bathroom, you return to see that Frisk has replaced Sans in front of Nattie’s chair, and Sans himself has doffed his hoodie and is apparently...baking something. Wow. Well, he would be if he didn’t keep glancing surreptitiously at Frisk and Nattie with a really weird look on his face. Weird enough that you wait for him to look again as you stand behind Nattie’s back and sign “Everything ok?”

He looks slightly apologetic and nods hurriedly. It doesn’t stop him from continuing to steal glances, so you wander over to watch whatever he’s doing and lean your butt up against the counter. You also look over at Nattie and Frisk; all they’re doing is combing Frisk’s hair, although you have to admit there’s not much to be done about that mess. The comb’s smoothening it slightly; Frisk’s eyes are narrowed in what seems to be enjoyment, and Nattie appears to be taking their work very seriously. The only other person there’s Ange, who’s reading something intensely on her viewer.

Sans is measuring various dry ingredients, but his hands are already covered in wet flour paste and clumps of what you think might be butter. There’s even more butter in a saucepan on the stove, but it’s not heating up or anything yet. You open your mouth to make some kind of comment, but it evaporates in your mind when his hands lift with purpose, his back carefully positioned to hide what he says from the rest of the room. You can see it, though.

“The reason Frisk’s hair looks like that is because they cut it themself,” he signs silently, staring through the bowl of flour on the counter in front of him. “I’ve never seen them let anyone else touch it like that.” His eye lights cut at you, quiver a little. He makes a scraping noise with an index phalanx against the bowl to diffuse suspicion that doesn't exist. “The most they allow is what you saw yesterday, and even that’s...not often.”

“What are you making?” you ask casually, nodding at him in understanding. He’d pet the back of Frisk’s hair briefly and gently, and only to comfort. You glance over again; Frisk’s eyes are actually shut now, and Nattie’s just combing quietly since they know Frisk can’t hear, managing to smooth the hair a little more through sheer persistence. It’s a fine-toothed rattail comb, and they’re tilting it slightly to make the pressure of the strokes even.

“’s a pie tori taught me a long time ago,” he explains out loud. “special pie. i wanted you to try it.”

“Frisk went to Toriel’s school here. There were human students as well as monsters,” he signs. “Frisk was already bigger than most of them.”

“back in the ol’ door days,” he adds; you think he’s pitching his voice so Frisk can understand too. He seems like he has a lot of practice doing this.

“There was a boy who thought it was a good idea to try pulling Frisk’s hair to get their attention,” he adds, then measures another teaspoon of something into his bowl of various powdery white baking substances.

“first time i made it, tried instant pudding mix. wasn’t bad, but she still laughed at me. said it wasn’t real butterscotch. told me you gotta make it on the stove.”

“Frisk broke his left arm in three places, and his nose.”

“she slipped me a real recipe through a crack in the door wasn’t there before,” he says quietly, and you wipe his tear for him before it falls into the flour. “paps doesn’t like it either way, but i do. frisk likes it too, so i make it on their birthday,” he adds huskily, and you notice the glitter of Frisk's eyes briefly before they shut again.

“They know when I’m crying,” he adds, and you do your best to process that. “After that was when Frisk started coming to the judgement hall and pushing me, trying to find out if I could see what they had done.”

“feels like a special occasion, right? thought i’d go head and make it for everyone, since tori doesn’t make it anymore. says it makes her too sad,” he smiles.

“Three years later, that boy came to the judgement hall on his own. When I Saw his reaction… I should have realized. About Frisk.”

“dunno why,” he whispers, and you wipe another tear. “but i figure it’d be nice to have some butterscotch-cinnamon pie this year, even if it’s secondhand. wanted it to be special.”

“It is,” you say quietly. “It’s special.”

“He counsels abuse survivors now,” he signs, then gives himself a big shake, sighs it out. Shivers it out as Frisk stands, pays Nattie an undisclosed sum, then wanders over to the other side of Sans and leans against the counter, too.

Their hair is a choppy, uneven pageboy bob; you can see it’s a little longer in the front when it’s not sticking up and out the way it usually is. Nattie really does do good work, even on non-imaginary hair; they’re still at the table counting their haul. Ange glances up from her viewer and gives her youngest child a very soft look. She seems soothed by something, and it touches your heart with a warm glow.

“Your pie is just as good,” Frisk gestures, looking pretty soft themself. “And...” they smile and wink. “Don’t tell mom, but I like the whipped cream you do better than the meringue.” They huff their strange little laugh, black irises glittering enigmatically. “It doesn’t taste like gamy monster eggs, that’s for sure. Where did she go, anyhow?”

“heh. think she’s up ta somethin’,” Sans murmurs, no hint of the silent monologue he’d laid on you anywhere in evidence. “she ain’t slick, though.”

“No,” Frisk agrees. “She’s no (Sans the skeleton),” they gesture ironically, using their cheeky name sign for him that translates directly to ‘bone smile’. “I’m going to go find out.”

“good luck, kiddo,” Sans replies casually, reaching out with bare, butter-flecked armbones to flick on the controls for the stovetop. The butter in the saucepan starts to melt slowly; Sans looks at Frisk like it wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “if it’s a surprise for me, make sure not ta spoil it before she does.”

Frisk snorts, shakes their now-smoother head, and departs for the unknown.

Sans tells you a funny little story about Frisk insisting on appointing birthdays to Sans and Papyrus, Toriel getting in on the action, cooking up surprise parties and spoiling them all herself by accident every single time. Nattie starts hauling blankets in from the other room to make a sort of nest underneath the table, and Mettaton appears to be doing some sort of meditation exercise involving the complete works of Izumi Shikibu appearing backwards across his display surface.

“When is your birthday, then?” You ask, lifting an eyebrow.

Sans stirs the saucepan lazily, watching the mixture thicken. “today,” he informs you casually. Because of course it is.

“And how old is the birthday skeleton today?” you ask teasing-childish voice, wanting to see what kind of evasion he comes up with.

He looks over at you, sockets ovalling with a much softer expression than you were expecting.

“mm. s’far’s i can tell, ‘m bout sixteen thousand, four hundred n fifty three years old,” he sighs, then smiles down into the pie filling. “’s really jus’ a guess for shits n giggles, though. can’t really-” he glances at you and cuts off. “don’t faint til i’m done stirring,” he jokes weakly, looking concerned. “don’t wanna have to start from scratch if this burns.”

_Fucking hell._

He’s telling the truth.

“You okay over there, Goob?” Apparently Angie’s sister senses are tingling, and you remember how to breathe for her sake.

“Yeah,” you say faintly. “Sans is just reminding me how not human he is again,” you add, voice slowly lowering to its normal range toward the end of the sentence.

“Oh. Um, okay,” she replies, glancing surreptitiously at the back of his skull. Luckily this isn’t the first time you’ve lobbed that excuse at her, so it goes over about the same as usual. After a few reassuring smiles she’s back paying attention to Nattie’s explanation of the trust fund they’re starting for Shonda with their new nest egg, and you turn to gesture at Sans close to your chest.

“Can you…die?” you gesture quickly with a shaking hand.

He gives you a look that’d be pretty sharp if it wasn’t softened by love and hurt.

“and here i thought you were the only person i ever met that didn’t ask stupid questions,” he murmurs quietly.

You swallow dryly. Yeah, okay. Considering he’s died and been made not dead anymore about fifty times since you met. And once you’d even done it together.

The _day_ you met.

Okay.

“Sorry,” you whisper.

“nah,” he says, shutting off the stove with a sigh. “ _i’m_ sorry. wasn’t stupid. shoulda realized that might upset you.”

You turn to look at him, give him a good look at your face, too.

“I’m not upset,” you say slowly.

He nods likewise.

“no trick to it,” he explains softly. “just gotta do it.”

You lean in, hesitate, then go ahead and give him a big kiss on his zygomatic process.

“Happy birthday,” you whisper.

“heh. thanks.”

“I have a surprise for you.”

“huh?” his eye lights shrink in confusion.

“A birthday surprise,” you whisper. “I woke up early and made it special.”

“huh,” he says, confusion easing into bemusement. He gives the filling another quick stir and lids it. “you gonna give it to me now?”

You nod and go into the fridge to produce the tray of flat little discs, turn around and present them.

“it’s candy,” you explain. “for you.”

He gets iridescent, then reaches out and takes one. He gives it a sniff, glances at you, then shoves it between his teeth. He only has to smash it a little to get it in there, and the filling’s sticky enough that the cracked chocolate sticks to it instead of spraying chocolate shrapnel all over the floor.

“Sorry, I know it’s-”

You stop, since he’s already eating another one.

“how’d you get it to do that thing?” he asks, looking pleased as pie.

“Oh, uh.” The fizzy thing. “Toriel gave me these little white things.”

“no shit,” he says, sounding impressed.

“Language!” Nattie hollers, and he rolls his eye lights as he eats a third.

“can you cover me?” he drawls gaily. You sigh, then nod. “nice,” he comments in a way that lets you know you’re going to have to produce at least ten ‘no’s’ in a row before he stops asking you every time you’re there and someone asks him to pay for something. Then he says “nice” again in a different way when you absently pop one in your own mouth. “you like em too?”

“Yeah,” you sigh. “That’s why I thought you wouldn’t.”

“’m not _that_ bad,” he protests, wiping his hands lackadaisically on one of Toriel’s pristine towels.

“Yeah, you’re worse than that,” you say truthfully, lifting an eyebrow.

“I watched you grate raw ginger into hot sauce and drink it,” Ange says weakly as she walks up. “Now I have to try it,” she adds, reaching out as Sans snatches the tray and holds it away.

“no way,” he says possessively, “this is my special surprise for sexy skeletons only.”

“I made another tray,” you smirk, opening the fridge to retrieve it. “Now I know there are two kinds of people in the world, and I’m going to find out which everyone here is before the end of gyftmas.”

“OHHH YESSS,” Mettaton bellows suddenly, and flips his own switch as you all duck the roiling cloud of glitter reflexively.

He saunters over as close as his outfit will allow in his android form, and you do what you can to extend a candy to him with the grabber thing.

“That’s certainly...bracing,” he concludes.

“I like it,” Ange retorts.

“This is butterscotch-glitter pie now,” Sans adds from the stepstool, testing his newly robot-transformation-bedazzled pie crusts with the fingertips of one hand, his tray of candies balanced above his head on the other.

“YOU’RE WELCOME,” Mettaton drawls with viciously narrowed eyes, and Sans just chuckles softly.

***

Music and boisterousness of varying intensity filters from the kitchen into the living room, where you’re slouch-sitting on the couch laxly enough to pass as a big, fleshy Sans. The days are short this time of year, but it’s overcast enough that the weather could already be described as night time; it starts to snow after a bit for good measure. It’s oddly soothing to just exist here, listening and feeling and thinking.

The real Sans is cuddled along your torso, bony ass planted on the triangle of couch between your legs and lying sideways against you. He has his legs crossed at the knee high and flirty, a slippered foot bouncing lazily and skull tucked under your chin as he reads something in a language you don’t know on his phone, nibbling absently at a distal pinky phalanx on his other hand. Frisk bites their nails; you wonder which one of them absorbed the habit from the other. Pinky distal’s one of the only phalanges that can fit between his teeth under usual circumstances, although you’ve seen him open it a little wider after a long, hot bath. His nibbling makes tiny little clicks you can feel more than hear through the bones of your own skull, right up through your chin where it rests on his parietal bone.

His mannerisms and personality have always hovered amorphously between a dozing grandpa, a self-assured teenage girl, a thirty-something with kids and six jobs living out of their car, a middle aged man, an alcoholic scientist, a blowzy lesbian townie, a government interrogator, and some kind of mercurial hot dog deity hell bent on sowing easily avoidable whoopee cushions between quicksand along the path of least resistance for another sixteen-thousand-and-change years.

And then every once in a while he does something that reminds you that even though he keeps saying he’s ‘not like Frisk’, he’s never actually said he wasn’t _capable_ of annihilating anything. Like yesterday. You wonder how many beings across universes and timelines are dead where they stand until the next time Sans uses all of his voices at once, and you realize you’re getting a bit more comfortable just accepting him as the only person you’ve ever met less categorizable than yourself.

He makes a pleased little noise he’s probably unaware of as you push your hand up the sleeve of his t-shirt to rub his humerus lightly, and you think about how lucky you are to have him. It’d be kind of weird at this point to have to explain ‘oh hey so sometimes I kinda know the future because I don’t actually have to experience time in linear fashion anymore’ to a human, unless they’ve already had their own uhhh trait revelation or whatever. Also, you love him a lot so there’s that, too.

You wonder when you’re going to have to have the Soul Talk with Ange. You’re not really looking forward to that, are you. Maybe the boat got rocked enough that you won't have to find out. This version of you, at least.

Sans puts his phone into his shorts pocket as Frisk wanders in and sits down. It’s definitely not on accident; the lights aren’t even on in here, but you can still see what they have to say with the light filtering in from the other room, and the barely-there watery grayness coming in through the thin white undercurtains.

Toriel’s put the hurdygurdy-and-flute on for good measure while she prepares her own pies.

Sans wraps his arms around you and sighs while he waits to see what Frisk has to say to him.

“I know why you’re worried,” they sign sheepishly. “What I don’t know is why you did what you did.”

“does it matter?” he replies, quiet and calm.

“Everything matters.”

“guess so,” he agrees easily.

“This is the oldest I’ve ever been,” Frisk says then, and Sans gets very still. Then he goes back to how he usually feels without saying anything. Whatever Frisk sees in his face makes them change the subject.

“I feel other things too. I know it’s my fault he died.” Oh geez. They can’t mean anyone except-

“flowey,” Sans says reluctantly. “it’s not your fault, though. you didn’t make that decision. it’s just something you feel.”

Frisk sighs, manages to look older than they are for just a second. It’s probably just a trick of the odd light.

“You know I was just as trapped as you all. There’s no way you don’t, at least not now.”

“that’s part of why i can still love you,” he whispers hollowly, finally sits up although he stays between your legs, facing Frisk to the side. You keep a hand on his femur, another on his hip. His rest loosely on your thigh. “but… i didn’t know then.”

“I’m sorry I did this to you. Made you like this.”

“what the hell are you talking about?” he hisses, low and disbelieving. “already _told_ you that i-”

Frisk’s head shakes furiously, cutting him off.

“I made you kill me on purpose, because I knew...I _knew_ it was the worst thing I could do to you.”

You gape; you remember what Frisk had told you that day with their portrait. The day they’d tried to make you look at Chara. To see if you would forgive them, or punish them. You’d done neither.

They sob openmouthed, almost silent.

“It took forever to figure out how. I wanted to ruined you the way I got ruined,” they sign with hands shaking so hard they can barely be understood. “To make you the same as me, but…. You already were, and I hurt you because I knew… I could?” Sans is shaking his head, but they keep going; you’re not sure they can even see it. “I did so many bad things, but you _wouldn’t punish me for it_!” Their shoulders shake with self-loathing. “You just told me to do better, but I _didn’t know how_! So I kept doing worse and worse things...until you finally made me pay for them, and-” Sans does something you’ve never seen him do; he reaches out and touches Frisk’s hand hesitantly, interrupting.

“i didn’t know what ta do either, kiddo,” he whispers bitterly. “i didn’t _know_ what to tell you, even the time i remember. ‘m sorry. never thought anything i said to you could make a difference,” he adds, lowers his eyes briefly. “never thought…i knew it wasn’t the first time you’d been there. you know that.”

Frisk gapes at him, tearstained face lost and baffled.

“i didn’t know what ta say,” he repeats, shamefaced. “didn’t think it...mattered.”

“But…?” They finally manage to shut their mouth. “You were the only one who told me not to _kill anyone_ ,” they sign. “You were the only one who wouldn’t even _fight_ , even Papyrus fought… but... except I couldn’t...catch you.”

He flinches.

“The only way you would fight me is if I killed every single person I got close enough to,” they say slowly. “Then kept walking around until I found _everyone_. And you knew I would...erase everything like it never existed if I got past you. You weren’t really trying to kill me, because you knew that wouldn’t...do anything. You were trying to get me to _stop_.”

He doesn’t understand.

“I couldn't kill you until you fell asleep,” they inform him slowly; you feel him shake somewhere deep inside, invisible. “Even then, you dodged when you woke up and killed me. The only way I got you was because I knew where you were going to be the next time, and you kept me there as long as you could every single time. Talking to me, telling me to just stop. Stop doing this. And...even when you were dying...” they look a little sick.

“You knew it wasn’t over. I won’t tell you what you said, okay?” they reassure Sans who’s starting to look a little sick around the sockets himself.

“You gave me a key,” they gesture slowly, and now it’s Sans’s turn to be shocked. “I saw the machine...the...” they sigh, give a wry smile. “You made me say a bunch of codewords to prove what I could do. I saw your room, the door, the...workshop.” They sigh. “I talked to those people who don’t exist, who told me about Doctor-”

“stop,” Sans rasps as the points in his sockets flicker out. Frisk jumps. “jus’...if you know his name, don’t say it. don’t _ever_ tell me, k?”

Frisk’s eye go as wide as they can in their suddenly haggard face, visible even in the dimness, and they nod fervently. Sans takes a deep breath, lets it out as his eyes go mostly back to normal. Frisk takes a deep breath before lifting their hands to say something else.

“What I wanted to _tell_ you is that… even if what you gave me doesn’t work, I won’t-”

Sans’s hands don’t hesitate when they still Frisk’s this time.

“maybe there’s a lotta stuff i don’t know,” he says, soft as water over stone. “but one thing i _do_ know is not to make promises i can’t keep.”

They stare at each other for a long minute. Sans’s skull is tilted gently, sockets oval and grin softened, utterly implacable. Frisk’s whole face tightens like a harpstring.

“ _you won’t keep it_ , frisk.”

The patience of water that wears cliffs to sand is in his voice.

“might be able to forgive you...even after all this,” he says, quiet and soft even as he shakes inside again.

The river that carves mountains in half.

“can’t forgive you breakin’ a promise like that.”

He knows what he knows.

Frisk’s eyes drop first, and he lets them go with a pat on the shoulder.

“let’s go get some root beer floats,” he smiles softly, then leans over and groans his way to his feet, shuffling away. He stops, looks over his shoulder and hold out his hand. They get up, walk forward and take it.

They look at each other for a long moment; Sans barely comes to Frisk’s shoulder. They’re the oldest they’ve ever been, and so is he.

Then they look back together.

They’re waiting for you, too.

***

The third round of pies are in the oven, the first is on plates, the second is on the cooling racks, and Frisk and Papyrus are dancing behind where Toriel rolls out even more pastry. Sans has put on some kind of playlist of his own, but it’s not the Smiths, somehow.

 _Your love_  
_Is better than chocolate_  
_Better than anything else that I've tried..._

Sans in in your lap again, feeding you bites of butterscotch-cinnamon pie. It’s delicious; he swipes a bit of whipped cream off your chin with a pinky and slides it between his own teeth with a wink. It makes you blush, and Ange makes a face at you. The crust’s so buttery it doesn’t even hold together, and the whipped cream is thick and rich, not too sweet. It’s the best mess you’ve ever eaten.

That’s apparently what Papyrus had been pacing and whipping all morning; he’s made enough of it to fill a bathtub, but he’d been persuaded to put it into little bowls around everywhere for people to dip into at their leisure instead.

Nattie’s tiny hand appears to tug at the hoodie Sans has put back on, and the next forkful of pie gets snapped up by a little pretend-Dog begging from their little nest of blankets under the table. Once it’s gone, they creep back under; you see Undyne’s hand slip under the table to give a bite of her snail pie to them as well.

Mettaton had called his car earlier, although Papyrus had walked him out to it “LIKE A TRUE GENTLESKELETON,” and apparently whatever Mettaton had whispered before getting into the car was enough to cause the seemingly random and intermittent pink tint to Papyrus’s zygomatic bones ever since. As is whatever Frisk is apparently gestures close to their chest at him now, too.

“ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE,” Papyrus protests with admirable aloofness, considering the depth of his blush. You have no idea why he blushes both different from Sans and in a color not really related to his traits, as far as you know. “ALSO REMARKABLY INAPPROPRIATE FOR THIS SETTING.”

Frisk just huffs at him.

Undyne and Alphys keep saying they’re heading back to their place, after one more slice of pie, one more dance with Papyrus, one more piece of candy, one more game of something with Shonda, one more, one more, one more.

Every moment is worth it.

Sans sets the fork down to wrap his arms around you and squeeze; you slide a piece of the regular peanut butter balls you’d made between his teeth to try.

“s’not bad,” he says evenly. He likes it more than you’d thought he would. “like mine better though. we gotta have that all the time, since we can share em.”

“You’re just trying to trick me into cooking more often. It won’t work.”

“better than me doin’ it.”

“You’re the worst,” you reply scathingly, he looks mock-hurt up at you. “You could bake like this the whole time, and you’ve been holding out on me.”

He sighs, rolls his skull on your shoulder coquettishly. “yup.” He pops the “p” for emphasis as a new song starts. Alphys and Papyrus groan in frustrated unison; he grins wickedly.

 _Park the car at the side of the road_  
_You should know_  
_Time's tide will smother you_  
_And I will too..._

Sans wiggles like a toddler ready to be put down; you open the circle of your arms so he can stand. He gives you a wink, then wanders over to where his brother has stopped dancing peevishly.

“c’n i cut in?”

“BE MY GUEST,” Papyrus gripes, then comes over and takes several slices of pie and a bowl of whipped cream into the other room.

Sans lets Frisk lead...or at least you think that’s what that is. It’s hard to tell when both dancers are that terrible.

_It was dark as I drove the point home_  
_And on cold leather seats_  
_Well, it suddenly struck me_  
_I just might die with a smile on my face after all…_

Nattie tugs at your sleeve, and you look around for something to give them. You finished your slice of pie already, but the table’s groaning with treats. You offer a special Sans disc, but sadly they return to their nest before you can see their reaction. You ask Shonda a question about her school project, something to do with monster history, when a tiny hand seeks and finds yours. It’s drawn under the table as you explain a complex point, then your voice trails off as something warm, slightly wet and fizzy appears in the palm of your hand.

You pull it back up, and it’s exactly what you think it is.

“We have a winner,” you announce to the room at large. “Sans, you owe me fifty G.”

“huh?” He does his best to look over, but Frisk is whirling him around too much. It’s a good thing he doesn’t really get motion sickness.

“It’s 40-60 in favor of NOPE,” you call, referring to the bet you’d made on how many people would like versus not like his special birthday candy. It hadn’t taken that long for them to decide, either; there’s a ring of teethmarks and a little bit of saliva, but it looks like the spicy coating had put them right off. In fact...it’s barely chewed.

Papyrus returns with his empty pie plates and bowl just in time to see you re-eat a slightly used piece of candy.

His corvid screams, Sans’s delighted laugh, and Toriel’s demands to know the cause of the ruckus sweeten the taste in your mouth almost beyond what you can bear; despite everything, you feel like your heart might burst with it.

 _I've seen this happen in other people's lives_  
_And now it's happening in mine..._

_Happening in mine  
_


	57. pear-fect timing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sugarcubes – Birthday  
> https://youtu.be/edmDN11BxCY
> 
> dove coo: https://youtu.be/-qS77R0Y1K8  
> raven calls: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Common_Raven/sounds#

You’re in bed fiddling with some work things and trying to read a few articles when you hear Sans get back from his trip, taking a shortcut into the kitchen downstairs. He promptly knocks something over, cussing softly. You smile and feel a flutter in your chest; it’s about a day earlier than you expected him back.

It’s past midnight according to your viewer; Angie and the kids have been asleep since early because they’ve got some sort of museum outing planned with Toriel for tomorrow. It pleases you that your sister and Toriel seem to have hit it off, enough apparently that Toriel wants to take the kids out for unofficial field trips like this. You smile softly at yourself; you still have that bad habit of thinking others are as isolated as you let yourself get, but Toriel has plenty of friends and activities to fill her time with. Angie’s getting there too, and it makes you glad she’s finding Ebott as welcoming as you have.

“heya, good lookin’” Sans announces quietly as he opens the bedroom door.

You open your mouth to ask why he didn’t just shortcut into your room like he usually would, then you see that he’s got the meds you’ve been too stiff to go downstairs and bother to retrieve, even though their absence is the reason you’re still awake. You’re in pain, and you still being up is how he knows you are.

“Hi,” you answer softly, letting your face do the talking for you. He’d checked on you before coming here, seen you were still awake and figured out why, checked to see where your meds were and went to them, came up on foot to bring them just to make sure he wouldn’t startle you. Because startling means tension, and tension means more pain for you.

That’s what you hope he reads in your expression: in his own way he’s the most considerate person you’ve ever met.

He gets a little iridescent, so it must have worked. He shuts the door behind him, then shuffles over to hand you to the medication and a stubby bottle from his pocket.

You look; it’s Waterfall water. Once he’s unloaded, he just sort of slowly capsizes sideways like a boat at the foot of the bed until he’s horizontal. He doesn’t even lean up on his elbow or anything. Just lies there on his side like a morbidly adorable rag doll, eye lights trained on you over those deep grooves under his sockets as he watches you swallow your meds.

“Do I look like I need this?” you ask, wiggling the bottle of special water.

“yup,” he replies evenly. “rough day?”

“Not really,” you answer quickly. “More of a… moderate pain… night. You’re back early,” you point out, changing the subject. As usual, he lets you.

“finished up early.” He’s been somewhere up way north of here with Alphys, fixing some kind of unfixable problem having to do with Core power getting to out of the way places. You’re not sure any humans entirely know _how_ the power gets to where it needs to go; no one’s found any wires, lines, electromagnetic waves or objects radiating magic that would explain how it works. And it’s not like monsters are going through a permissions process for it. They just show up, and after they leave the people there have magic powered lights, transportation, heat, and whatever else besides food and water. Those are (or aren’t, as the case may be) still happening the old-fashioned way, as far as you know. As much as they can anymore, considering. Just as well there’s not as many people as there used to be, since there’s not as much food or ways to grow it as there were, either.

“Anything explode this time?” you ask, then down your dose of magic water.

“nope. went pretty easy, jus’ had to make a few things talk to each other. communication issue.”

You never really know if he means it literally or figuratively; it’s the same way he talks about math and computer stuff, too. Making code understand itself, making computers connect and exchange information. Or he might mean literal sentient objects or beings having a reluctant discussion.

“Did Alphys get back too?”

“few more days for her,” he sighs. He always leaves her to figure out the nuts and bolts, doesn’t he. His eye lights contract slightly, and he moves his skull a little. Once you compensate for direction, you realize he’s shaking his head.

“can’t do what she does, n she can’t do what i do. s’jus’ different, that’s why we go as a team.”

“I know,” you say quietly, letting the water do its job as you hand him the empty bottle.

“mmm.”

His sockets round out as he remembers something. “brought ya something; dunno if you’ll like it? it’s something to eat, but i couldn’t try it out first.”

“You brought me human food?” you ask, touched.

“mmhmm.” He doesn’t even sit up, just lies there on his side as he pulls his phone out of his pocket. You still goggle when he pulls out five perfect beurré-bosc pears and lines them up on your coverlet, however.

It’s been a while since you’ve seen fresh fruit at all, much less something like _these_.

“no idea what these are like,” he says quietly, getting slightly iridescent at he takes in your expression. Apparently his little snack surprise was better than he thought. “not like you can leave em long enough to turn to magic; they uh. spoil.” He smiles, glances at them fondly and looks back up to meet your eyes. “asked for some cause they reminded me of you.”

“Of me?” You pick one up, turn it speculatively as you frown. “Really? Why?”

He picks up a shorter one, holds it out. “looks like you. see?”

Huh?

You take it and blink, set the other one down and try to see what he sees. Then...you do, and your face gets really hot. Narrow and graceful at the top, broad and full at the bottom with a lightly pitted surface; they’re ripe and covered in olive-cinnamon russeted skin, matte and vivid.

Yep. Stick limbs and a head on there, and it’s you. Butt-ass naked.

“Wow,” you grin over at his perfectly sincere expression.

“Wow,” you inform the pear as well, for good measure.

Coming from a human, you probably wouldn’t take that as a compliment. When you look at him, you can’t take it as anything _but_.

He doesn’t have any of the associations, negative, gendered, racial, or otherwise, that a human might have with being shaped like a pear, having brown skin, or the texture of the surface. And he’d only told you they look like you after he’d already seen your delighted reaction to receiving them, after all. Something better than either of you had expected, something you looked at with desire, appreciation, and excitement.

He’d just thought to bring you a snack with a short shelf life. You’re excited to have fresh fruit at all, much less in the middle of winter. But that’s when these are in season, aren’t they? You test the skin with the pad of your thumb near the stem; yeah, they’re ripe alright. Then you push into it with your thumbnail; the flesh underneath’s white and slightly firm.

“Where did you even _get_ these?” you ask, running your nail along to open the skin in a line, and then do another on the other side.

“old lady with a house by the place let me have em when i asked. well. saw me lookin’, told me to take some when i said they reminded me a my sexy human _lover_.”

You flick your eyes over at him; he’s grinning at you softly now. Apparently he’s decided he likes that term, and he’s starting to look curious about what you’re up to. You run your nail up from the bottom, let it branch out like a “y”.

“You think I’m _sexy_??” You widen your eyes in mock surprise without actually looking away from what you’re doing.

“oof. ya caught me pear and square,” he sighs contentedly, wiggles his skeleton ass a little. “’m gonna perish of embarrassment and saucy language.”

“These are bosc pears. The way the skin is, it’s called russeting. Did you know?”

He lets out an amused-suffering sigh.

“definitely do now. that lady talked a _lot_. bout two hours a my life i’ll never get back…guess that’s how much these cost, huh?” he quips, leaning forward. “these ones weren’t on the tree, though. ones i saw were old, still hangin on but not good to eat anymore?” He looks amused by the idea. “she took these outta cold storage, cause they need to be put away ‘fore they get ripe. these ones she already had out, so i guess they’re ready.”

“I didn’t know that,” you acknowledge absently.

“’pparently they grow ok north a here still, but… they used to be all over down here? dunno, didn’t really follow that well,” he explains idly, leaning up now to try and see what you’re doing. You bring the fruit closer to your chest, tent your knees up with the blanket draped between to hide it as he does his odd skeleton version of a pout. His is even less effective than his brother’s since his grin stays more or less where it is.

“You have an eidetic memory,” you shoot back, almost done now. “If you didn’t follow, you just weren’t listening. So technically these _are stolen_ ,” you finish in a conspiratorial whisper, widening your eyes again.

“you gonna stop callin’ me out and show me what you’re doing to that forbidden fruit over there?” he says, laying on his front now with his chin in his hands, kicking his stocking feet in the air over his butt idly.

For a long time you’d thought those sort of mannerisms were an ironic affectation of some kind, but they’re actually just an honest expression of his personality when he’s feeling happy and comfortable. Playful, relaxed, interested-in-a-lazy-way. His complaining about the lady’s long-windedness aside, he’d probably been riveted. After all, if he’s bored he just leaves or goes to sleep; he already admitted to staying for two hours.

That’s the thing about Sans. He loves learning things for the sake of it. It’s not something he really talks about, just like when he thinks about all the little crabs in the ocean, or the tiny snails and slugs minding their own business. Most of the stuff he looks at in his monster phone are big bricks of text. Fiction and histories, textbooks and instruction manuals, comics and cartography, all sorts of shit. He just likes to know, and he likes to _like_ things. He doesn’t need anyone’s permission or approval for any of it, and he doesn’t need other people to know he knows things or to like what he likes. Might even prefer they didn’t a lot of the time.

And the more you think about him liking things, the more it makes him understand why he likes you. You know a lot of stuff, much of it for its own sake and more than half just because you wanted to find out, looked it up for some reason or the other, or needed to find out in a hurry a few times. You’re just more inclined to talk about it than he is, and something about you makes _him_ more inclined to talk about it. Enjoy it with someone who’s like that, too; someone who likes liking things. Come up with reasons, get speculative and far out with it, learn and figure it out together.

The look on his face when you finally reveal your masterpiece tells you a lot about why he loves you.

“never been so sorry i can’t eat something in my life,” he says plaintively, and you grin and believe him. He holds out his hand, and you give him the pear you’ve scratched the likeness of your own naked torso into with your thumbnail. As an object, it’s creative, funny, true, ridiculous, useful, useless, silly, and collaborative. Nonsense without context and complicated regardless, just like him.

You managed the two little lines for your chest scars, a “y” at the base in the front and a line in the back, and even a tiny little nick where your navel is. You added a dorsal line in the back above the buttcrack line, then two little diagonal ones to sort of represent your shoulderblades. His face does something interesting when his distal phalanx touches the spot between them, right where he likes to rub when you hold each other.

He smiles, lifts it to his nasal cavity. “mmm. Smells good like you, too,” he grins, then winks.

“Want to watch me eat myself?” you ask in your best version of a sultry voice.

“oof,” he says again quietly, hands the fruit to you and puts his chin back into his hands with a little click. “i’m all sockets.”

You make deliberate, extended eye contact as you stick out your tongue. If he didn’t see this coming, well. He really should have.

“Lllalllalalllallll,” you add, to remove any ambiguity.

He snorts and lets his face slide off his hands with a rasp, muffles his laughter in the bunched up blanket. His surprised little chuckle rings out when he lifts his head again, sleeve-wrapped fist covering a socket as he watches you closely with the other.

“Shhh,” you caution, and he gives you a look like he’s mad he doesn’t have a tongue to stick out.

You take a big bite and moan.

“ _shhh_ ,” he parrots ironically, and you almost snort pear chunks into your sinuses.

It’s perfect and sweet, so juicy it runs down your arm to your elbow. His sockets widen a little, and he gets iridescent when you run your tongue up the drip. You suck down the rest of the pear, and start eagerly on a second while he just watches you go to town.

You sigh in satisfaction, set the inedible stems and little brown former flowers that live on the bottom on your nightstand.

“Okay, put these ones back in there,” you urge, pushing the last three toward him gently.

“not gonna finish em?”

“If I eat that much fruit at once I’ll get the shits like crazy,” you giggle. “So get them away from me before I do it anyways.”

He grins at you fondly; it’s funny because it’s true. “gotcha.”

He puts them away, then produces a little piece of the soft cloth-paper monsters use. You dip a corner it in your water glass and use it to clean up; he hooks one of his phalanges in the top of his sock, pulls it off and flips it onto your floor, then repeats the motion with the other sock before wiggling up into bed next to you. When you’re done cleaning off he puts the little wet square back in his phone to be dissolved and remade, however that works. He’d explained it, but you hadn’t really understood very well.

He sets his skull on your shoulder, and you feel him go a little looser all over as he sighs tightly, then again deeper like he’s been running a marathon and finally gets to rest. It feels like all his magic’s uncoiling and softening, bones slowly easing apart in your embrace as you gather him into you like a sweet little bag of heavy sticks and liquid love.

“i can tell it’s kickin’ in,” he rumbles pleasantly after a minute, making you give a short yip of laughter.

“How??”

“can feel it.” He gives you a squeeze. “like you’re turning into a big pile a squish.”

“Oh my god,” you snort quietly. “I was just thinking the same thing about you. But you’re like...a pile of bones.”

“kinda _am_ a pile a bones, darlin’.”

You sigh in utter contentment and sudden whimsy. He was right. You’re a big, strapping bosc pear, and he’s a...

“You know what _you_ remind _me_ of?”

“hmm?”

You give him a light hug, loving the way his cloth-covered bones feel in your arms. “A little pigeon, or a dove, maybe. They’re the same thing, sort of.”

“s’like a bird, right?”

“Mmmhmm. You and Papyrus both remind me of birds.”

“really? what kinda bird is he?”

“He reminds me of a crow, or a… a raven, actually.”

“why?”

“Hmm. Well...mostly because of his voice.”

He tilts his skull back to look at you dubiously.

“there’s a bird that sounds like _papyrus_?”

“How have we watched this many nature documentaries and you don’t know what a crow sounds like?”

“dunno what the other thing sounds like, either,” he adds with a shrug.

“Oh my god. Okay, now I _have_ to show you.” You summon your viewer, call up an info entry on ravens, since in your opinion that’s closer. You set the volume to something reasonable considering how the sound can carry, then watch his face when you make it play.

It goes gratifyingly soft.

“huh,” he sighs after a minute. “play it again.” You do. “it really does sound like him, doesn’t it?” He looks at the images, then the video too. “doesn’t look anything like him though. maybe-”

You’re already shaking your head and grinning.

“what?”

You call up an image of a _white_ raven, leucistic rather than albino.

“oh shit,” he snorts in surprise, starts giggling. “that…actually _does_ look like him in a way, huh?” He pushes his forehead on you and laughs some more. “…ok, ok. which one’s me?”

You pull up the sound of a rock pigeon, turn the volume up more. He looks oddly soothed. “that’s a nice sound,” he says after a minute. “i’ve seen those around? heard em before too, but… _i_ don’t sound anything like that.”

Now it’s your turn to giggle. “You do, though.” You lean in close to whisper. “Especially when I do things that _make_ you sound like that.” The expression on his magic-sheered face is priceless, and you grin. Then you pull up a recording of fluffy little collared doves getting petted by a human hand and cooing, and his whole face gets soft again. Their calls are slightly higher, trilling and a little mournful.

“it’s cute,” he says quietly. That’s kind of surprising, since he doesn’t usually say that about animals. Even baby ones. To him they’re mostly just weird and interesting. He tilts up again, looks at you with an odd expression. “you think i’m cute?” he asks quietly.

“…Um, _yes_?” you squeak incredulously. “I tell you you’re cute all the time. _Too_ cute,” you add, grinning and waggling your eyebrows at him.

“huh,” he says vaguely, looks back at the recording of the doves. “those are like...pets, right? like human dogs, not wild animals?”

“Yeah,” you answer quietly, then giggle because what he means by ‘human dogs’ is….regular dogs, not Dogs. He says stuff like that, ‘human food’, ‘human dogs’, ‘human buildings’… Just like humans say ‘monster food’, Dogs, ‘dogs, and buildings. It’s just funny to you because Dogs like the ones from Snowdin are more like what you would have thought of if someone had asked you what a ‘human dog’ would be like before the barrier fell.

“They’re pets.” You dismiss your viewer and lie down the rest of the way, give him a big hug and sigh contentedly. You put your hands inside his hoodie, sliding around between the pilled inside and the soft cotton of his shirt, hard bones and soft magic beneath. “They’re not like people; they have to be fed and cleaned and taken care of by people.” He knows what animals are of course, and pets. He has a pet rock; even if it’s not sentient, it’s all the more novel for it. But if he wants to hear it again, you’re happy to comply.

“sounds like a good time for the pets,” he comments, and you laugh again. “but why do the people do that?”

“hmm,” you whisper, helping him wiggle out of his sweater and setting it free to drift off somewhere in the ocean of blankets and sheets in your king-sized bed. It’s like a dove nest that way, littered with the feathery detritus of your lives… sometimes you find clothes, little cloth-paper squares, and empty containers in there, although at least you don’t leave human food around. That would spoil, and be much grosser.

“People want company, something to take care of. Something cute that likes them, wants to be petted and loved.”

“people love the animals?”

“Well...yeah?”

“you love me that way?”

“Oh my _god_ , Sans,” you snort into his cotton-covered ribcage. He pulls the blankets up over you both, and you look up into his shadowed face, eye lights always visible even in the dim. “You’re not a _pet_.”

“why not? sounds like fun.”

Yeah. You’re losing it. He wants to be your _pet_ , get stroked and fed and taken care of, because of course he does. When you finally calm down a little, you wipe your streaming eyes on his shirt and look back up at him.

“Sometimes people like to play sex games like that,” you inform him, giggling. “Pretending to be pets, eating out of-” you snort again, “-little bowls on the floor, dressing up like animals and going for walks on leashes. It’s a little kinky,” you add, and he gets iridescent. Looks slightly weirded out for a minute, too.

“think muffet’s got one a those,” he says speculatively, and you snort-giggle for a little bit.

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

“guess i don’t wanna eat off the floor if i’m not on it already…though i wouldn’t kick it outta bed,” he says, then he giggles. “come to think of it, i like eatin’ in bed the best.”

“Do you want me to feed you out of a little bowl in bed?” you grin, and he glances to the side bashfully. Ohhh, he _do_ _oo_ _es_. You file that one away. “Are you hungry now?” He couldn’t share the pears with you, after all.

He shakes his head agreeably. “nah. stopped off at grillbz’s for a snack before i came home, and he cleaned me up too. kinda forgot about both while i was gone, just wanted to get it done with,” he snorts and shrugs, then gets thoughtful. “i think he likes it when i come back from a trip, s’like… all the smells or whatever from a ways off.”

That sounds a little kinky to you too, but you don’t mention that, and just snuffle around in his shirt yourself. It does smell different than usual. Most of the time his clothes smell like you, him, and the soap you or Papyrus use to clean the laundry. (Sans does laundry too, but he takes care of the kind that can only be done in Waterfall; Papyrus deals with the more mundane soils.)

He called your place _home_ , didn’t he. Hmmmm. Distal phalanges find the back of your neck and tease there idly. He shivers in enjoyment as your hot breath whuffles through the cotton and into his ribcage; he makes a happy little noise, and you feel a slow oscillation in his magic. You feel sleepy and lazy with treats and laughter, pain faded and fading, not worried about anything and very happy to see him. So you wiggle back up face to face with him, slide your arm over and press your chest to his. Think about just how much you’d loved seeing those five little pears lined up just for you, loved being reminded that he thinks about you when you’re not around. Even when he’s far away.

His sockets close halfway, and he traces your nose gently with his nasal bone as he makes another deep, pleased sound. The inside crook of his arm underneath touches the back of your head lightly to urge you even closer, supporting your neck as he nuzzles you gently.

“Let’s stay in bed tomorrow,” you suggest softly. “I’m off work for a few days anyhow.”

“mmm.” His hand tightens on your waist, then caresses. “okay. let’s stay in bed tonight, too.”

You snort softly, pull him even closer. “Sure thing.”

His body conforms to yours easily, and bone fingertips trace soft words of love and contentment between your shoulderblades. A femur pushes between your thighs and the other goes overtop; his pelvis comes to rest along your leg.

It’s interesting how you’ve started to notice the difference between the way his body resonates, and the way it feels when his soul does. You can perceive both, and it’s a special kind of intensity when they fall into sync: the slow oscillation of his body-soul together punctuated by slow, soft surges from something even deeper. It makes you think of his directionless pool of desire that happens in between those, too, like when you touch his bones.

He huffs softly in your neck, breath warming with closeness. “whatever you’re thinkin’ bout, pretty sure i like it,” he whispers, the rubs his face in your neck a little. “mmm.”

You pull back just enough to start touching his face with your fingers; his sockets get long and the points in them go wide and unfocused. “can’t believe the idea of you touching me like this used to scare me,” he whispers as you glide skin over skull, rub the heat of yourself into his tepid, smooth-and-textured bones.

He lifts his chin, sighs when you reach in to touch his vertebrae. The tiny rim where they start to become between is ever so slightly rougher than the smooth curve that forms the anterior body; touching further between starts to feel like trying to force the wrong ends of magnets together. His breathing roughens a bit, because pushing on it when it feels like that… you know it feels good to him, makes pleasure pool up in his soul when you touch his magic this way. Then you glide down, dangle your fingers into where it starts to become his ribcage. This is a different feeling, almost like the bones that surround this space are drawing something through your fingers, or talking to each other through them. It’s that sensation of _betweenness_ that his integral magic has in the bigger spaces.

You shiver up with goosebumps because he’s touching you too, running smoother-than-skin hands over the front of your shirt light and repetitive.

“think we got the same idea sneakin’ up on us,” he whispers, one socket closed playfully. Then he gets soft all over, looks at you with naked longing and affection. “missed you.”

“Me too,” you admit. “I want to see you.”

His sockets slip shut as he exhales shakily, and his skull lolls on the pillow while he absorbs that with a shiver. It always takes you by surprise, the way just saying things like that to him makes him have to stop and just...roll around in it for a minute. Like you said something so explicit he’s incapacitated, except...all you did was say you want to see his soul. Well. When you think of it like that, what it _really_ is, and what you’re really saying...a part of you can relate.

“you wanna call me?” he whispers hopefully, and you give an affirmative, eager hum.

His closed sockets open again when he feels your response under his phalanges. “you too?”

You start to nod enthusiastically, then bite your lip. “Everyone’s asleep, though. Can you be quiet?”

He snorts softly. “can _you_?”

“I’m way better at quiet than you are,” you smile, arching an eyebrow at him.

“heh. maybe.” He rubs you again; you feel his call and inhale sharply. “might be fun to find out.”

You smile and rub your face on him fondly, let him feel your call, too. You’re less experienced with this, and still a little hesitant but as far as you can tell he’s extremely into it. You both go slow and let it build, reveling in anticipation and each other, loving every second of getting reacquainted, being reunited. It doesn’t get less special, and you don’t actually do it that often. Well, it feels more often for him than you, you’re sure.

He slides a silver-sharp thread of just how much he missed you into his call; you think about your longing for his return, the fulfilled burst of sweetness in your mouth and soul.

You echo his little huffing breaths right at the cusp, then you pull together with shaky, stifled cries against each other’s faces.

You lean foreheads together to look down into iridescent white and dark-luminous blue… you really want him to touch you, and you let it show. He shivers, takes a deep breath, and…

Sans’s eye lights flicker suddenly, distracting you.

His face gets a little distant, but it doesn’t seem bad or anyth-

“everything’s fine,” he projects softly, and he’s not talking to you. “s’jus’ me. you can head on back to bed, kiddo.”

Oh _god_. Ughhhh.

It’s like he’s listening for a moment, then he focuses back on you.

“hey, it’s ok,” he whispers against your burning face. “she’s not even really awake. think she got confused hearing me in here when she went to the bathroom, cause ‘m back early.” He closes and opens his sockets slowly. “she’s already back in bed. s’fine.”

You feel awkward now.

“I feel awkward now,” you whisper, glancing to the side.

“mm? i don’t. want me to help?” he suggests softly.

You eye him speculatively; it’s a genuine offer.

“Yeah, sure.” You don’t know how exactly, but-

His fingers slide into you, and you exhale super slow to keep from waking up anyone else. Then you inhale likewise and shakier, because he’s giving you a steady taste of how he feels: not awkward at all. Safe, surrounded, private, close, sleepy-soft-satisfied.

It really doesn’t bother him to have people around, does it.

“nah,” he whispers. “not for this.”

There’s more to it than that, but you don’t know exactly how. Something about his idea of “home”, complicated feelings about community and...not-alone? Checking in?

“nothing wrong with what we're doing. can’t explain it, but i can show you. you wanna touch me too?”

Your wordless rush of desire is more than enough for him to find your fingers with his, weave them together and bring them up under his pearlescent essential self. “yeah. s’a good feeling. you ready?”

You certainly are.

“k.” He curves his fingers in along with yours, and lets out a shuddery breath filled with pleasure and contentment. He lets the moment linger and spread out wide, foaming into him like broken waves reluctant to be pulled back, lingering past the point of explicable physics. Seconds dilate into minutes; his hard frontal bone meets your forehead as he curves bones into your soul. He lets being-touched flow right into touching-you, and you open wide as he creates a loop to let it draw out even more.

He breathes into your lungs; you give it right back, yours quivery and tart with fruit sugar, his clean and chalky-dry. The way you opened right up for him to give you your joined touch…he wants to push this, wants to know if you want to share his magic with him.

Ohhh…. You shiver, he clutches you with his legbones, locks the warming, patient cradle of his pelvis around your thigh. Lets your soft heat push up into his pubic arch, lush and full. You can’t wait, and you want to feel it with him.

Tiny butterfly feelings of communication flit across your souls; your fingers slide into yourself as well, softening and complicating his touch. Then he gasps softly as you spread your fingers to lace with his and turn at the wrist; it’s like you rolled over your entire self at once to show him the vulnerabilities underneath. Even touching together, you’re so strong.

Oh shit. You’re really… you’re _really_ good at this. It takes his breath away.

Wow. Did you distract him from what he was doing a _second_ time?

You sure did, but now he’s nudging at your face with his, and you feel his preparatory little huffs as he gets ready to share it. Already he’s giving you that utterly alien sense of physical pleasure that has to do with his magic becoming not-him inside himself, inside you. You like it so much he lets it quiver and elongate, spreads it wide and thin like a microscope slide to show you even more.

It’s a biological process for him: the physicality of his emotions being made not-him, becoming something he can give back to himself, that he can put into the you-that-is-not-physical. The way it feels when it comes out, when it goes in… it isn’t focused on any particular part of his body; it’s his entire _being_ dividing without losing wholeness. The sensation is extraordinarily sexual despite the difference, tapping into something just as primal and intense as it is gentle and satisfying.

You smile because the autoeroticism of this experience for him is so much more complete and complex than similar activities for humans. Masturbation is one thing; it can be very good, but it lacks a certain sense of intimacy at best, and at other times feels more like a bodily function than anything else. In contrast, when Sans pushes his body into his soul, he’s literally making love to himself. When he does it to you at the same time, that experience becomes shared and intensified.

He hums and quivers; it’s turning him on that you’re letting him draw this out, share so much of how it feels. He smiles because he’s listened to other monsters, he’s felt things with them and he knows something because of it: his magic feels better than theirs does. He’s not sure if it’s because of what he is, what you are, both in combination and doing this together, or just his own preferences, but this?

There’s _nothing_ like this.

And the only thing that feels better than pushing his magic inside himself is when he pushes it inside you.

The first time he’d ever done it he’d been too overwhelmed to really feel that part of it; the second time had been shockingly, absolutely spectacular. A _revelation_ that left him weeping and shaken, trembling with you for hours. This buildup’s reminding him an awful lot of that right now. Hoo boy. You loosen your fingers to let him guide you since he knows exactly how he wants it, knows how he wants to give it to you too.

Are you ready? Oh, you _are_ ; he throttles down a tight whine as you let him feel the excitement the heat in his breath and radiating from his dentalium causes in you; it gets even tighter when you give him how this experience can sometimes feel penetrative to you.

His breath hitches twice in a row before he can draw it in, because _oh fuck_.

It’s so close… it’s almost here, and...yeah, _here it is_.

His face pushes into your clothed shoulder to muffle his hot, quietly explosive moan when he finally lets it come.

You breathe shakily together as he rushes in; even a little bit feels heavy and maple-thick with his personality, pushes in just like the joined touch had when you opened that way. And you feel it all over again, the experience tumbled smooth and driven deep with his magic, his ocean dilated to syrup just like the space between seconds spread out long into minutes, just like the spaces between atoms divide until there’s more time, more space, expanded and expansive, expanding by _filling_ the new space all at once.

He gives you the soft little hiccup-ish sound he only makes when he does this, and he turns his face into the pillow suddenly to smother a second one, to absorb the magic flowing from his sockets as well now. His femurs squeeze your leg between them as heat drops low in his pelvis; you feel a magnetic weight there without any physical resistance. It’s not doing anything, just sitting in there as soft, full potential without feeling like it needs him to do anything about it. He makes another sound as his fingers spread, then sink in; his wrists bend to push your fingers held delicately between his metacarpals deeper.

He’s surprised by it, but it feels...really good. It’s edging around into this flash flood too; do you like it? Is that okay?

You shiver with the weight in his pelvis and let it echo back into him; yes, it’s almost lasciviously satisfying, you’re just better at quiet than he is, remember? His half-formed quibble at that makes you smile a little wickedly. You flood him with a glimpse of his shed magic floating on water, then let him feel the hidden little shiver you’d suppressed when you’d realized it sought you out, sinking into your skin even as he touched you in the bath, and you came like it triggered a switch. You’re not above fighting fire with fire, and neither of you have anywhere to be for quite some time.

His noises in the pillow get higher; you make a near-silent sound deep in your throat as he pours anew into you both, and his fingers dart between your souls to pull threads of this, push them along and stretch them between, sharing and savoring each little moment and sensation. Gravid satisfaction; closeness and connection. Pure sensation is what he pushes into you both, transcending what you’re doing and being a summary of it all at once.

He curls in towards you all over briefly, then shivers it out; opposing urges meet like ripples inside you and him, even though they’re both his. You make him feel like it’ll be impossible to stop his magic from flowing until he passes out, your presence gives him the care and control to end it exactly where he should, a snipped thread right at the end of a lovely tapestry woven just for the two of you to enjoy, sinking in to pleasure and soothe. Like two pebbles dropped in a still pond, the waves meet and cancel each other, jittering over the surface until it calms again. One last rush and it dwindles, then ceases.

You breathe heavy together, calmed and excited at once as you swirl fingers and feelings around in each other along with his magic, giving and taking with lazy desire, lush gratification. Then his skull rolls up enough to reveal a socket that peeps up at you hesitantly.

Okay, maybe you’re better at quiet than he is.

You exhale in amusement and love, because you don’t mind at all. You love his sounds, love the way this kind of sex is like a conversation with him.

Well, you’d mind if it woke everyone up, which reminds him. He can still share that complicated little feeling if you want. And of course you do, it’s interesting. His skull reveals itself as he moves to face you again comfortably, sockets narrowing to slits as he considers, takes his time. Then it comes up slow like a temperature change from tepid to warm: awareness.

That’s not what you were expecting.

It’s not like any of your senses at all. It’s not sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch. He didn’t realize that, but he keeps it there, lets you explore it gently, see it from all angles. It’s just a subtle, consistent awareness of…

Oh. Oh, _wow_.

He smiles soft and unfocused as he lets you feel his constant awareness of other monster’s souls. Because they’re all the same soul, and it’s not just an idea. It’s an actual thing, and every monster is always aware of it, much like you constantly feel currents of air and derive information from them without necessarily knowing you do… it’s just subtle, background, constant. Or maybe...somewhere between your awareness of gravity, and the beating of your own heart. Hearing strangers breathing in a quiet public place. Something you don’t notice unless something happens to disturb it, or you concentrate on it really hard.

And that’s the kind of awareness monsters have when someone’s soul is condensed and exposed nearby from time to time.

Not as much information as overhearing or seeing, nothing like _that_. Just very vaguely, ever-so-slightly aware that it’s occurring, and it’s nothing to be embarrassed about or hide. It’s...lucky? Welcoming? Comfortable? It’s..

Nothing you have a word or a concept for, apparently.

But it _is_ part of why “staying over” is a thing.

Because being in the same house with someone for an extended period of time pretty much guarantees this awareness will happen at some point. It’s not sexual, or even intimate in the way you would associate with that word. It’s completely neutral, and it just… _is_. The same way that if a human spends the night at another human’s house, it can be assumed they will sleep. You might hear them snore or sneeze, and you might see them first thing when they wake up, too.

It’s part of what “home” means.

After all those revelations, it’s part of what helped him come to terms with what he is. Remembering that awareness, being at Grillby’s and feeling it constantly helped a lot, too. He might have human traits, but his soul’s still a monster’s soul, and it always will be in a way he can’t ever dismiss or deny.

It is so very comforting.

It’s part of why people go there, especially the ones who live in OverEbott.

Also funny: some of the monsters who decided to stay in UnderEbott after all do so because being unable to sense monster souls nearby constantly freaks them right the fuck out. It would be like suddenly trying to live somewhere without gravity or a heartbeat. Or maybe the way the total absence of air movements would be a subtle but nonstop source of vague disturbance. He laughs softly as he feels you looking at that, too; a lot of places in the underground had been like that before the barrier was destroyed. A lot of people avoided Snowdin because the temperature changes and cavern shape caused things like _wind_. It didn’t bother Sans and Papyrus to live in the back ass end of nowhere, and that’s what Snowdin was.

He’s just letting you explore him, patient and pleasurable, calm and close. He loves it, and he loves you too. This is walking all the way through the house you’re building together and into the wings of himself: his past, his relationships, his people. He’d encouraged you to come in, and it feels good for him to have you there. He lets you feel that too, and you moan softly. Okay. Maybe you’re both less than the best at quiet.

He smiles, then it slides flat into a shaky exhale when you open up to let him in the same way. He shivers hard and leans his face close into yours, touching rather than looking.

Are you sure? You don’t have to just because he did, and he knows you’re keeping something in there that hurts. He’s not afraid or put off by that, he just knows this is hard for you.

You’re sure. It feels…easier that way.

He probably figured it out, but there’s a difference between believing and _knowing_.

You let him in because you want him to know you.

You make a soft sound deep in your throat as he approaches the ragged-edged ache you’ve been carrying all week. He can look if he wants, see you carrying it around hour after hour. He does want, so he watches you bear it, watches your joints buckle beneath it. You smile and nod, speak and go silent, walk and cook and make schedules and keep appointments. His breath tightens as he bears it with you, sees your hands falter with unseen reluctance, feels the invisible haze over your vision.

You don’t say a word to anyone, because talking doesn’t help.

Nothing does.

It’s just like this for you.

You turn your face into the pillow and weep softly; he sets his hard face on your cheek and weeps too, tingling soft into your skin. It gets heavier the closer it gets to midnight, and then it’s just….there. Crushing and boring and miserable and inescapable.

He feels it _with_ you. And somehow, much to your astonishment…it helps.

Sans touches his teeth to your lips softly, nudges at your chin.

It doesn’t have to be like this if you don’t want it to be. And you don’t have to explain anything, or try to find words for it. He just wants to give you something, if you decide you want it.

The torn boundaries of what you’re feeling quiver; he’s in a place where he can see it, makes him feel like he knows what to do. You exhale slowly, nod and let your eyes slip shut even as a few last tears leak out from underneath your lids anyhow.

He pulls your joined touch out of his soul with a whisper-moan, muffles a deeper, breathier one in the pillow as he puts himself back. You use your freed hand to stroke his back gently while his femurs squeeze your thigh between them, push it up into his pubic arch to enhance the warm, full feeling there.

“can i touch alone?” he breathes quietly once he calms a bit.

You pull your fingers out of yourself and shiver as his touch fills you with presence, solid and loving. He changes position, then rolls up and over you with a little grunt; your hands find the back of his pelvis, come to rest flat and easy on his ilia. He straddles you low and close, then just sits on the plush tops of your thighs once he feels you can take his weight there. He leans in, holding you carefully as his loving gaze crashes hard into your dark blue soul. He turns his hands and presses in gently, cupping you close and safe; you exhale and shudder violently as the last of the tension drains out of your body so thoroughly you almost wonder if it’s soaking the mattress beneath you.

“that’s it,” he breathes, so quiet it’s not even a whisper. “let me take care of you, ok?” You caress the back of his sacrum idly, then join your hands to hold him where he is, keep him with you. “’m not going anywhere, darlin’,” he reassures you; he’s so careful, so sincere, and what he wants to help you feel starts pouring in already. “gonna stay right here with you, long as you want.”

He’s so quiet, his voice more felt than heard, slow vibrations barely caressing the membranes deep in your ears; you feel his words closer to where his phalanges change position again. A hand frees itself to slide under your shoulders, and he leans in and down until you open your eyes a little. His sockets are only inches away, and he holds your soul gently beneath your chin.

“think you can take it if i fill you up?” he asks, leaning in closer and closer until his shaky breath spills out across your lips with his sweet, deep voice chasing behind it.

You stifle a sob; you’re ready to take whatever he has to give you, you want _him_ , you want-

He shakes his skull even as he shivers madly, pants soft with desire. He gives you just a _taste_ of how much he wants to do this, and you have to press your tongue hard to the roof of your mouth to keep from moaning with it.

“you gotta know…’m talking about _all of it_. everything i got, okay?” he pants soft against your lips, the points in his narrowed sockets dilating to the point of translucence.

Like the first time?

His sockets shut, and he pants wordlessly for a moment. Then he opens them again.

“got a lil more than that right now,” he whispers, and you feel dizzy with the prospect. “fast and hard like that one time, though, so it won’t last as long. probably gonna make you real sleepy, but if figure that’s a good thing right now, huh?”

You weep with desire as he shushes you softly and spreads his fingers in you soothingly; you can’t help it. The pain and sleeplessness, the bone-deep grief and weariness of it. You want to lay its wounding burden down; you want to feel peace, you want to rest, you want to feel close.

You want what he’s offering… but is he going to be okay?

He exhales soft, touched by your concern. “sh-sh-shh,” he soothes as you weep a bit more. “hey, s’okay. wouldn’t do anything to mess myself up with you, you know that. jus gonna have a snack, then i’ll curl right up here with you n sleep like it’s going outta style, all snug and safe,” he explains slowly, tracing your face gently with his nasal bone. “if you want it… gotta tell me, okay? ‘m gonna-”

You bring your hands up to sign before he can pull back, and a line of darkness appears between his teeth as his eyes manage to focus in your words. He tilts his skull in awe; a drop of magic wells and slides down the groove beneath his socket, hits your lips and makes the points in his sockets flicker. You lick it before it sinks it, let it roll into your mouth and throat, numbing and sensitizing at once.

His breath shudders out before he sucks it back in and holds it; his arm holds you snug and tight underneath as he fills you with a single emotion, almost shockingly stark where it emerges against the backdrop of his beautiful complexity.

He loves you _so much_ , and he wants you to _feel good_.

A tiny, almost nasal sound emerges from somewhere deep in his skull; he pushes his body even closer to you until his skull’s buried in the pillow next to your head. Heat puffs up near your ear as he muffles his voice as much as he can; the rising tide of what he’s going to give you makes it hard to keep anything inside. He lets you feel every moment to make sure you can see it coming, and your breath hitches the exact second when he’s ready.

With a deceptively tiny, broken cry into the pillow, his fingers curve deep in your soul.

A solid wall of peace hits you like a heated blanket made of love shot out of a cannon; he pulls you up tight against him, his hot breath huffing into your neck as complex carpals slide slick against your shirt, quickly shoving you home. Hard bone fingers keep moving, slide tender and careful up to cover your mouth gently.

Which it a good thing, because then

a fountain blooms massive inside you

like everything good you’ve ever felt in your life

all at _once_.

Your body arches up trembling into hard bones; a tear slides from the outer corner of each eye even as they roll back in your head. A low, soft groan almost as deep as Sans’s voice vibrates against his hand, spills out of your nostrils anyhow to join his high, surprised gasp as he shoves his face back into the pillow. A sense of _rightness_ fills you, purpose and pleasure, sweetness and satisfaction. It doesn’t wash away your grief; it surrounds it and makes room, soothes and strengthens you. Makes you able to bear it without hollowing your bones, without breaking you.

“ohhhhh _fuck_ ,” he chokes, his whole body shaking with a wrenching, stifled sob as he feels your rush; feels what happens when he loves you with literally everything he’s got. “ _love you_ , okay?” he hisses, weeping and shaking on you helplessly. “love you so much.” Your eyelids flutter and slide shut as you realize you’ve never felt anything more delicious than his panting, heaving weight on you right now.

You feel _existentially_ loved, and it’s _so good_.

It’s okay.

 _Everything’s_ okay, and so are you, and so is he.

You know beyond the possibility of doubt: he’s never wanted to hold on to anything more than he wants to hold on to you. To make you feel good, to make you happy as you make him. To protect and care for you, to keep you close as long as you’ll let him.

No matter what.

And you _are_ sleepy, but not necessarily because of what he did; more like because you already were, and have been for a few days now. This is just letting you feel it, helping you be okay with it. Sans slides off you to the side, holds you tight against him with the arm of the elbow he leans up on, then reaches back with the other to rummage in your little nest for his hoodie. He finds it, pulls something(s?) out of his phone one-handed as you shiver and sigh, and you can tell he’s set a few objects on your body over the blankets. It’s like weights are on your eyelids, and he pets between your shoulderblades encouragingly. His fingertips are like the smooth ends of paintbrushes, polished-blunt points sliding hypnotically over cotton-swathed skin.

“no one woke up,” he’s whispering as he chugs something steadily; from the smell it’s probably ketchup. It makes you smile, comforts you with its familiarity. It’s the same kind as they have at Grillby’s. “everyone’s tucked in nice n safe, sleeping cause it’s time for sleep,” he rambles, and you can hear how tired _he_ is in his voice now. He tugs the blanket up farther over both of you, soft and warm. “’m right behind you, darlin’. you go head, and i’m gonna curl up right here with you in jus’ a sec.”

You let out a soul-deep sigh, shiver and settle.

“happy birthday,” you think he might be whispering as you slide into unconsciousness.

You don’t celebrate it.

You haven’t since it became the day your mother died instead.

He’s breaking the rules, but you decide to let him… just this once.


	58. no soap radio

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty Hutton – Murder, He Says  
> https://youtu.be/ClGNm89GZBE

“Then p-put the numbers up against _last_ time, D-dogfucker.”

Despite her stutter you can almost always understand Alphys, even over the noise of her claws rapidly hitting her keyboard. It is both a blessing and a curse; you suppress another giggle and rub your eye a little wearily.

“sorry, i cunt hear you,” Sans drawls absently. “got too many dog dicks in my ears. bare ass me again later.”

“You c-can complain, or you can b-be lazy. Not both,” she says again. “And you d-d-don’t h- _have_ ears.”

“ohh, you gotta be kidding me,” he deadpans, then reaches over and starts clacking the phalanges of his left hand on his second keyboard without looking away from what he was already doing. “what’m i gonna do with all these dog dicks now?”

Alphys starts listing her suggestions, and you’re starting to regret giving in to your clingier impulses as their banter grows increasingly...exotic.

They’re doing a round of maintenance tasks that must be completed every 70 days, and it always takes a week as long as they eat and sleep here. Otherwise it takes even longer. This time you’ve decided to spend the week Sans would usually be gone braving the Hole along with the Lab Gremlins, aka Sans’s Take a Human To Work Week. What you’re taking is the opportunity to finish organizing the materials for your seminar for MAHI in a fresh environment (so to speak), and right now you’re going through some interviews with monsters who’ve had relationships of one kind or another with humans, visually skimming for certain key words and phrases relevant to the section you’re outlining. Then you go ahead and just close them out, because it’s hard to concentrate once the Sans and Alphys show hits happy hour.

“Okay, I can’t take it anymore,” you interrupt once they start getting into bodily functions you’re 90% sure monsters don’t even _have_. “Unless you’re having a contest where the prize is getting to mop up my hurl.”

Sans turns around and looks at you, but he just grins and shrugs. Even Alphys doesn’t bother to blush anymore, although she looks at you a little sheepishly.

“Do you even know what that word you keep saying’s _referring_ to?”

She takes a suspiciously enthusiastic breath to answer, and you wave her off with a grimace, making Sans giggle and her expression turn vaguely disappointed.

“Never mind, forget I asked.” You look back at Sans. “I’m hungry. Let’s go eat now, since you don’t want to do whatever it is she wants you to do.”

Alphys snorts, then expression leaves her face entirely as her mind drifts back into the Number Zone.

“thought you were nauseous,” he retorts, but he’s already groaning himself up off his little rolly-stool.

“I’m nauseous because I’m so hungry,” you shoot back, and you and he make your way to the room that has the microwave, bunsen burner, and trash can in it. Not that they use that last thing half the time, which is part of how you know you’re somewhere underground. Although neither is particularly stringent about litter disposal under most circumstances, they’re still noticeably less so underground, where there’s really no such thing as garbage. You don’t know for sure that’s where this place is, but you’ve got some pretty solid suspicions.

You walk right in since it’s not like there’s a door between the two rooms, although there’s yet a third room past this one that does have a door. And another couch, five chairs, three computers, a big screen, several ancient viewing devices, a half-collapsed drift of cartridges holding anime and whatnot against the back wall, and about five clear steps on the floor between those things, as long as you already know where they are. They call that one the “nap room”.

This one’s the “kitchen”; the sink in here’s hooked up to Waterfall so Sans can drink right out of the tap if he wants to. Instead, he trundles over to his desk in this room (they each have a minimum of one desk/computer combo in each of the three rooms that comprise The Hole), plops onto his kitchen rolly-stool with a grunt, and starts going takkata-takkata without further ado.

You sort through the crap all over the counter and unbury the kettle, and put some water on to boil which is simplified by virtue of being already half full of the kind of water Sans can drink. You hit the button and it starts to heat up, easy peasy.

“You want some noodles?”

“sure,” he answers brightly. “you got me spoiled now. must be eating every day with you here reminding me.”

You smile and exhale in amusement even as you shake your head. “I need the distraction so all my hair doesn’t fall out from you and Alphys’s shop talk. It’s only been one day, but we’ve eaten four times and slept once if you're keeping score.”

He groans wordlessly. “jus’ six more ta go then. can’t say ‘m lookin forward to it.”

He’s stopped clacking all over the keyboard; now he’s just poking at a button over and over with his index phalanx. Every time he does, the screen changes slightly. or...actually, it’s completely different each time, crawling with numbers and symbols the size of ants. And he just keeps on clicking right past them after a cursory glance.

“What are those?” you ask idly over his shoulder.

“mm? it’s uh. checking the enthalpies.”

“The… heat content?”

“heat, pressure, volume. the, uh.” He makes a vague waggling gesture near his knee. “all that. probability density function, too.”

“Okay, but for what? The Core?”

“nah. s’for all of it,” he drones absently.

“All of what? The world?” you laugh.

He just nods like a true bastard, because he’s neither kidding nor entirely paying attention.

You pour the water over the noodles and let them sit for a few minutes, checking out Sans’s pale-pink socks as he looks over the world’s enthalpy and thinking.

You suppose sixteen thousand and change years is plenty of time to learn or invent some kind of massive mathematical matrices or vectors or whatever the fuck you call them to figure that out. After all, he’d already had plenty of practice thinking in those terms and crunching the numbers until they didn’t spell disaster; this is just a bigger system with more variables.

Sometimes it’s hard to imagine what it would be like to live for that long. At others, you suspect it’s pretty much this, just… longer.

“Why don’t you take a break for real to eat with me?”

He breaks eye contact with the screen after about four seconds and looks soft over his shoulder at you.

“don’t gotta ask me twice,” he says, even though you literally did. You set Alphys’s precious anime bowls filled with cheap instant monster noodles and tasty broth on the table in front of the two least-cluttered chairs, and go about clearing one of them off for yourself. Sans just paddles his little bone feet to roll on over next to the chair perpendicular to yours you’d unconsciously assigned to him instead of standing just to sit again. He picks up his bowl with a lazy smile, sets it to his teeth and tips it back, even though it’s still practically boiling.

“It must be nice not having to wait until food cools down to eat it,” you comment wistfully.

“mm. i dunno,” he replies as the level of broth in his portion lowers to about half. “maybe makes up for not being able to eat anything but magic.”

“You can also talk while you’re eating. That’s just unfair,” you grin.

“look at it this way. i can run my new stuff by you while you wait for yours to cool off, so it works out, right? hey, what’s the difference between me an’ this soup?”

You stare at him silently as he puts the bowl under his chin and starts using the chopsticks to sort of poke noodles messily into the thin gap between his upper and lower teeth on the left side.

“i’m comic sans, and this is times new ramen.”

“That isn’t funny,” you inform him adoringly. “I don’t think anyone’s going to get it, especially without the context.”

“good. i’ll put it on the list.”

“Any reason you’re in such a good mood?”

“’m jus’ trying to get pasta real boring workday,” he adds. “what’s the difference between papyrus and a bowl a soup?”

“What?” you indulge him this time.

“one’s my little brother, and one’s a little brothy-er,” he says, and looks slightly crestfallen when you snort. “awww. that one’s right out, then. gotta maintain my reputation.”

“Noooo, keep it,” you wheedle gamely. “I thought it was cute, but that was mostly just surprise. I was kind of expecting more of a ‘bone broth’ direction to happen.”

“mmm… ok, maybe i’ll put it between two real loads so it smells worse,” he ameliorates.

“Get a double helping of that good old Sans stink on it?” you tease, and he gives a short little “heh” of laughter. then he gets thoughtful.

“or i could jus’ save it up for paps.” That’s what he does with jokes either so egregious they’re basically torture, or conversely, those that are better than he expected or intended. It’s his reserve arsenal to shake his brother out of his head on bad days, which even The Great Papyrus has been known to have from time to time.

“I have to imagine everyone’s heard every joke you could possibly come up with though, haven’t they?” you ask, frowning a little. “Especially Papyrus.”

“nah,” he answers quietly, tipping the bowl between his teeth again. You’re amazed; he might actually finish his food for the first time in recent memory. “i got a million of ‘em.” He winks; your eyebrows raise of their own accord. A million is a pretty impressive number, even for him.

Not enough to fill the amount of days he’s lived, though. Or the amount of days he’s experienced, regardless of however...time had...hmm.

“I was wondering something.”

“shoot.”

“Time went slower inside the barrier than outside it, right? Because outside I think, um. Well, they say it was like two thousand years or something. But it was longer for you guys?

“i wasn’t there the whole time,” he reiterates slowly. “and uh. before us, i guess they didn’t really...keep track?”

“I’m not actually trying to bum you out,” you say quietly, giving him an apologetic look. “I was more hoping you could explain why that was possible?”

“can’t be bummed out in good company,” he protests mildly, and smiles bigger when you stick your tongue out at him.

“reason time passed slower inside the barrier’s cause...” He frowns very briefly, then looks at you with a grin.

“gimme your hand a sec,” he says with a wink, and sets his bowl down to reach out diagonally over the corner of the table table.

You do, and he takes your fingers and pushes them right at his neck, between the vertebrae.

“what’s that feel like to you?”

You give him The Look. “It feels like your body, Sans.”

He exhales in amusement then lets your fingers go.

“okay. so...basically, when you try and touch in there you can’t, right? it’s a force, like uh...”

“I always thought if feels sort of like trying to push the wrong ends of magnets together, but sexier,” you say blandly.

His face lights up, and he actually finger-guns you with a weird little slide-whistle noise originating from somewhere in his skull, making you laugh.

“perfect example. k. so, how much you know bout gravity?”

“The usual amount?”

“not talking about in terms of what keeps us stuck to the ground. more like the, um. thing that bends spacetime.”

He sees you don’t entirely get it.

“gravity’s the thing that doesn’t act like anything else. it’s its own thing, plays by its own rules. important thing to know is that the closer you are to a big source of gravity, the slower time moves. and don’t give me that look,” he smirks, “s’not some bullshit i made up, you can check and see for yourself if you got the right equipment. atomic clocks in space run faster, no matter how many times you fudge it around. even clocks a few feet above one another run different, cause one of em’s further away from the origin.” One of his sockets shuts impishly. “center of the earth’s about two and a half years younger than the outside cause of that. s’a trip, huh?”

“But you weren’t far enough underground for it to be...” He’s shaking his head.

“that’s actually not what caused it,” he says, shaking his head a little. “got sidetracked. what made all that gravity’s the same thing you feel in here,” he says, pointing to his vertebrae. “magic. but all of it that existed, shoved into a tiny lil space it couldn’t get out of.”

“Oh, shit,” you say, realizing a few things at once. “Are you saying that magic has enough gravity to bend spacetime?”

“nah. _doing_ that to magic _curved_ spacetime. more n more the longer it stayed there. ’s a pretty unique situation… an entire force sealed off into something that nothing can come _out_ of. like… imagine all the _heat_ in the world closed off in a pocket dimension? would that be fucked up or what?”

You cover your face in your hands for a minute and laugh.

“So. You’re talking about...”

“gravitational time dilation,” he says with a nod, looking pleased. “cept… there’s different ways to make gravity. or uh, gravitational waves, bending spacetime, whatever ya wanna call it. magic’s a thing. it does something and it _is_ something, and-” he cuts off when he sees your face.

“So all magic is actually an...indivisible unit of a force that...makes up the universe. You’re basically saying magic is a quantum?”

“oh,” he says, then nods. “yup. thought i said that already. ‘cept it’s all one piece, so you can’t do particle math to it.”

He hasn’t, but you just sigh. You’re used to him.

“Okay, something I’ve been wondering about for a while now. Are souls made of magic?”

“nah,” he says, looking bemused.

“So...what’s the difference? Why can they interact the way they do?”

He frowns for a long minute.

“cause they’re moving in the same direction,” he answers after a while. You suppose that’s good enough for now.

“But what _are_ souls made of?”

He shrugs, shakes his skull. “they’re...souls. they’re made of souls.”

“Okay, but...” Wow, he’s really not seeing what you’re getting at, is he. Unusual for him. “What about The Stuff you make?” you ask quietly. “What’s that made of?”

His face closes.

“have ta ask alphie bout stuff like that. i don’t know.”

You let it drop.

“Is magic like a bridge between physical substance and what souls are made of?”

“no,” he answers simply. Apparently there is not any more forthcoming, so you get back to the topic at hand.

“Okay, but… how did time keep getting slower? What changed? Something had to, right?”

He sighs with a deceptively gentle look on his face.

“nothing could get out, but stuff got _in_ ,” he explains.

“Oh shit,” you whisper. “The Dump.”

He inclines his skull carefully. “human stuff fell down, turned into magic. happened in a few spots. in the ruins, one by the old throne room...and the dump. there was no way we could get to em, shore em up or close it off to keep it from happening. whatever spots it was falling through were outside the barrier, and anything we put there stopped working eventually.”

He sighs.

“on top of that you got every monster soul down there, too. that probably had an effect, but even me n al never quite figured it out.” He smiles thinly. Well, as thinly as he can manage.

“eventually it would have got so bad, it all would have collapsed in on itself.” You shiver like a goose walked over your grave. “that’s what the core really does, ‘sides make energy and heat and light and all that. takes that force and turns it into those things, gives it a lil...um. outlet? Kept that from happening, but it’s not perfect. can’t balance everything out, so the time problem got worse and worse, and the longer it went on…. heh. ’s a funny little joke. the more time there was, the more time there was.”

He’s not amused.

“spent a lotta that time trying to come up with a probability density function for how much would fall down, see if i could tell time that way. come up with some kinda prediction rate for the expansion, at least. but…none of it really came through in a reliable way.” he sighs heavily. “and it jus’ got harder to predict over time. one day, nothin’. next day, five tons. and they weren’t really….days.”

Entropy.

“How could you _know_ that the time was taking longer than usual? Is it one of your special perception thingies? That’s the part I don’t get.”

“wasn’t just me,” he shrugs. “everyone could tell, the same way you can tell the difference between right now and yesterday.” Then he gives you a considering look. “well, most people, anyways. heh.”

You frown. “I still don’t get it. I mean, right now I’m talking to you. I say a word, then another word, and a second passes. How could it still be the same second, even though I’ve said all this?”

He shakes his head. “other kinds of time dilation don’t work the same way,” he tries. “like...if we were traveling at the speed of light, we wouldn’t notice any difference, but time outside’d be moving slower. we’d find out once we stopped moving. but with gravitational time dilation, you notice the same way someone outside it would.”

“This is that thing you say sometimes,” you conclude. “Where physics just turns into philosophy.” He nods.

Well. You’re probably never going to be able to know what it was like, so you shift gears and slurp down a few mushy noodles.

“If the Core was an outlet, didn’t you have to change what it does once the barrier was destroyed? Since it didn’t need an outlet anymore?”

“sort of.” Sans tips the last of the broth between his teeth, spattering a bit on his hoodie and shirt. “still jus’ kinda siphoning off energy when physical stuff turns into magic, then making it go somewhere else, do something else.” You’re both still eating, so you keep asking. Also because this is interesting, and Sans is having one of his better communication days (or subjects).

“Can you explain what happens when something turns into magic?”

“um. well. you know how there’s all those spaces between the particles? well, that’s where magic goes first.” He grins. “like that first time we went to grillby’s, told you how monster drinks work. that’s all magic, goes in those spaces. well, when something turns to magic, something else happens to the, um. particles. start moving in that same direction i told you bout, like souls n magic.”

“Why?”

He gets that look on his face, the one that cores you like an apple every time. It’s like watching extraneous thoughts and information boil off in a big cloud of steam, leaving behind the bare bones of a crucial idea, shining with truth anyone can pick up and start running with. It’s a gift he has, a knack, a facet of the gem you think he is.

Here it comes.

“magic wants to fill the space it’s in,” he says finally. “things have...properties. jus’ like how gravity bends spacetime, or photon-based light has a speed. that’s what it does, like...that’s who magic is.”

Oh, yeah. The ‘photon-based’ light thing. You’d tried getting him to explain how magic lights work once, and he’d immediately started saying math words and drawing things. It was just like the time you asked someone in the physics department at your old college to explain how magnets work and she’d started talking about no two fermions can have the same quantum number, something-something ‘domains’ and your brain had decided to go on vacation. No dice.

“So… do you perceive magic because it fills space? And you perceive space?”

“mm.” he looks like he’s considering that pretty hard. “sort of. i mean. there’s no pieces, so that’s why you gotta do deformation gradient tensors, n that’s all about spacetime. that’s how continuums work… you need time n space for it to change, then you measure the change.” Well. You tried.

“We’re starting to skirt the edges of my ability to know what the hell you’re talking about now, I think.”

“that’s okay,” he says, looking pleased as pie for some reason. “how bout i show you something cool instead?”

You look at his bowl; there are still some noodles in the bottom but he finished the broth, and you're all done too.

“Show me something cool,” you request with a grin.

Sans wheels over a few well-worn trash speedbumps on his way to what turns out to be another desk under a pile of equipment, dirty dishes, and other typical flotsam and gets to unburying something. You watch with fondness as a white-enameled metal box the size of a microwave slowly becomes visible, and once it’s mostly revealed he waves you over, sockets long and oval, face set in an easy grin. When you get up you see his hand dart behind him without looking or ceasing his unburial rites, and he drags out a little metal chair from underneath the desk with a screeching sound that makes you wince.

“sorry,” he mumbles. You brush off a few tattered papers and sit in time to see his expression shift slightly to the one he gets when he’s looking for something in his phone, then his hand emerges from his pocket holding the last gift pear you’ve been having him hold in stasis for you.

“Awww,” you exclaim in disappointment. “You revealed the forbidden fruit. Now that I’ve seen it...I’ve gotta eat it.”

It’s true. You can resist anything except temptation.

“well, that’s what it’s for, so. probably a good thing, huh?” You reach for it, but stop when he speaks again. “let me put it in here first so you can see what it looks like.”

You look at the box. “In there?” He nods. “Is that a microscope or something?”

“nope,” he answers simply, then hits a button that opens the box.

“Did this used to be a microwave?” you ask curiously.

“think so,” he answers, then feels along the top until a panel flips up, revealing a plane of dark, reflective material forming a triangle with the panel and the top of the box. You hear a little click as he sets his face against it, peering into the dark material even though you can’t see anything going on with it. He pushes a few more buttons including what you think might have been a potato setting at some point, and-

“That’s not going to do anything to the pear that prevents me from _eating_ it, riiiight?” you add with a little edge to your voice. He better not be _cooking_ your last pear, either. Science will be damned and revenge will be exacted if so.

“heh. nah, it’s fine.”

Sans paddles his feet idly to roll his stool back from the thing.

“have a look-see.”

You do. There is a bunch of wiggly stuff cast in black and white and something that would be like sepia-tone, if sepia was hot pink.

“There’s a bunch of wiggly stuff,” you report faithfully.

“yup. that’s what something that’s all physical looks like in there.”

“Oh _hh_ hh _h_ h,” you say in an excessive number of singsong syllables, and he giggles.

“k. let me find something that’s…” He trails off and you straighten away from the box to look at him. He’s got his sockets shut now, which he usually does when he’s communicating in some way you can’t perceive, or looking at (or for) something you can’t see. He spends a considerable amount of time doing both, and when he’s _really_ busy with it most people think he’s asleep. It’s one of the inherent ironies about him that really just….really get you. Right smack in the feelings place.

“I think I just realized the amount that I love you is beyond fucking ridiculous,” you say with a sigh. His sockets open wide, and the points in them come into existence just so they can flicker at you. He freezes, then magic seethes in his face so hard he turns that light sea foam green color he only gets when he’s _seriously_ riled, yellow and blue in tandem like they can’t decide if they want to stay part of him, or flee his emotional reactions like rats from an exploding ship.

The smile he gives you actually manages to be tremulous for a second; it strengthens and you add your blush to his when you hear a choked noise from the other room. Ahhh, yes. Alphys is here. Well, serves her right for all the times she’s forgotten _you_ were here. Sans too, for that matter.

He makes his little throat clearing sound, but doesn’t really regain his composure entirely as he rumbles, “love you too,” quietly, doing the little head-duck he does sometimes when you really blast him good. “gonna get you back for that one,” he whispers surreptitiously, then pulls a waxpaper packet of oyster crackers out of his pocket.

“I love having something to look forward to.” Hee hee. You also love watching him squirm in a good way.

He takes out the pear and presents it to you, then waits to let his blush recede as you wolf it down, even though you're trying to savor it.

“It’s like I can taste the nutrients,” you groan lasciviously.

“can you not usually?” he asks, real curiosity lurking somewhere behind his words.

“Don’t worry about it,” you say to head him off at the pass; he gets a little shinier as he watches you lick your fingers eagerly, then he hands you a little square to clean up with. He reloads the box with the crackers while you do.

“k. have a look at that.”

You do. Whatever the wiggly stuff is has a weird glow around it now.

“s’what it looks like once most monsters can eat it.”

“I thought monsters could eat human food. Alphys says she can.”

“she can. but, uh. most monsters won’t get much out of it til it’s like this. doesn’t, uh...”

“Nourish?” you try.

“sure,” he shrugs.

“Do they have to get rid of it after?”

“heh. well. that’s a crapshoot.”

You sit up, and he winks deliberately.

“So it depends on the monster and the food in question.”

“you got it.” His sockets get long and oval, and he fiddles with something to the side, then something else underneath.

“this is how it looks when me n paps can eat it.”

There’s no more wiggly stuff. Just the glow, in between...nothing. _Wiggly_ nothing, you realize after a minute.

“Where did it go?” you ask after a minute. When you don’t receive an answer, you lift your head to see Sans narrowing his sockets at you, a weird expression creeping over his broad bone face.

“didn’t go anywhere,” he says after a minute.

Then he gives you an unfamiliar crooked smile …and his _nasal cavity_ changes shape slightly as he leans in to peer at you closely.

Wow. You don’t think you’ve ever seen that happen before. Is it like...flared nostrils?

“Well, that’s a creepy face,” you grin.

“hey al,” he calls quietly. “wanna help me find somethin’ out?”

Alphys totters in more quickly than you’ve seen her move before with her own mildly disturbing half-smile, immediately noticing the unearthed wiggly-stuff-viewing machine. She also sees how Sans is looking at you, and keeps approaching until she’s leaned flush up against him to peer at you as well from as similar an angle as she can manage. You’re not sure how two monsters with such different faces can manage to have the same exact expression, but they do.

“Okay, if you don’t reassure me _immediately_ I’m going to jump out the window before I end up leaving here with my feet sewn to my head,” you inform the short, slavering scientists in front of you bluntly.

“T-there isn’t a w-window in here,” Alphys replies with a furrowed brow. “And-”

“There will be when I get done. Now what exactly didn’t go anywhere, and what exactly are you trying to find out?”

Sans’s grin gets slightly more normal, but he’s still got the odd nasal cavity thing going on. Alphys’s nictitating membranes are half-mast underneath her gelid, almost quivering eyes, and she’s leaning in with her mouth open like she wants to taste the air around you.

“if i tell you, it won’t work right,” Sans informs you in an absent tone. “it’s not a big deal. nothing that can hurt anybody one way or the other.” His smile makes him look more like a human skull than usual, but he’s telling the truth.“how bout you tell alphie here what jus’ happened?”

You sigh indulgently, even as you cut your eyes at him in mock resentment.

“I can’t see whatever the particles in human food change into once Sans can eat it.”

“They… c-can’t see it?” Alphie says quietly, and her aspect sharpens considerably.

“guess not.” Sans tilts his head, then his eye lights flicker. “uh. how comfy are you with al knowing our bedroom stuff?”

You let out a massive sigh, considering she’s become you and Sans’s one stop aftercare shop for traumatic sex accidents and reliable source of physically impossible workplace suggestions. “I just assume she already knows the hexadecimal code for the color of my taint.”

Alphys frowns petulantly. “He won’t even t-t-tell me what your genitalia looks like. You know m-m-mine; it’s not f-fair.” Then it softens, and she glances down. “B-b-but I know it’s d-different for humans, and if p-people know what they are, it changes how they treat you. And they c-call m- _me_ a pervert,” she snorts wryly.

“Okay, just tell her whatever you think she needs to know-” you say, then cut Alphys’s wildly ecstatic expression off at the pass with, “- _relevant_ to what I can or can’t see. And it’s only fair if it’s double blind.”

They both stare at you blankly.

“Talk with your hands so I can be spared the ignominy of the facial expression thought police over there, and he can’t read my mind from the way I react to what you say. Anything else is cheating.”

You sigh the last few words, because they’ve already started flashing their fingers at each other silently in the sign language you can only understand when they want you to, frowning and darting evaluating looks at you.

Aww. They’re so creepy and happy. Crappy? Too bad that’s already a word that doesn’t mean creepy-happy.

You watch them go, their laser focus honed in on whatever it is they’re discussing...possibly proposing ways to test whatever they’re thinking might be the reason you can’t see whatever it is. You’re assuming it might have something to do with how you can’t see how Sans feels when you look at his soul, or at least that’s the only reason you can think of that he’d ask about telling Alphys “bedroom stuff”.

For a moment you feel a twinge of guilt for distracting them from their work, but you know it’s not actually a big deal. It’s not like they’re taking measurements or anything else that might be time sensitive; they’re processing information on a massive scale that’s already been gathered by other monsters since the last time they did this. They want to get it over with, but it’s no disaster if it takes a while. They check to see if everything how it’s supposed to be, find out why if it’s not, and come up with solutions when necessary, although the implementation is mostly left to Alphys.

You consider what Sans always says about her: that’s she’s the best at keeping secrets of anyone he’s ever known. And you have to admit you really haven’t noticed anything to give something away in her actions, words, or demeanor since you’ve been here.

You’ve been looking for tells, too. You know that she must be working on something for Frisk and Flowey; something to do with The Stuff Sans’s body made that time. Maybe trying to make it into that Franken-soul you’d needled Frisk about a long time ago. You’ve tried asking Sans about it here and there, but after making it clear that he has no plans to participate in it to any degree further than he already has by allowing Frisk to have it, he just shuts you down completely, or he shuts down behind his smiling, stubborn passivity. He’s not mean about it or anything, but the more you push, the more it ends up feeling like you’re badgering someone you love about a significantly sensitive subject, and you end up letting it go.

You watch Alphys’s expression change between smug and fascinated as they go on with their weird little discussion; Sans seems somewhere between impressed and… hungry? They’re still charming and fairly cute; cute because it’s obvious they’re having a lot of fun, and charming that this is definitely their idea of fun. Some mystery they don't _have_ to solve, but they want to. Or maybe they just want to mess around with it and procrastinate, who knows.

They’re experienced enough with this kind of herculean mental work to they need to take breaks and switch tasks often, since taking longer is fine, but making mistakes is not. They need to stay sharp and focused, and are pretty good at finding ways to do just that. You have a funny feeling you're going to spend a lot of time looking into boxes this week in whatever downtime Sans and Alphys make for themselves, and you’re kind of looking forward to it.

This part’s getting a little boring though.

They don’t look away from their conversation as you get up quietly to go wander around for a few minutes, maybe go back to what you were doing before they derailed your concentration with their raunchy banter. Come to think of it, it’s quieter in here than you’ve heard it before. Usually the rooms are filled with the clacking of keyboards, shuffling papers, huffs of thought, frustration, or boredom, the groans of Sans and Alphys shifting their sitting-sore bodies, or their quiet snickers as they give each other blistering verbal reminders to stay sharp and focused. You’ve spent a decent enough amount of time here at this point, enough to be familiar with the rhythms, sounds, and sensory input integral to this place that don’t really change much, although you’ve never stayed overnight here before this week.

Enough that you notice a sound that doesn’t belong here when you pass by the exit door to the Hole on your unhurried way back to the couch where you work awaits you.

You stop, frowning.

Then, because you’re more like Sans and Alphys than you give yourself credit (or recrimination) for, you grasp the door handle silently and open it just a tiny bit, trying to hear it better.

That’s the thing about auditory processing disorder. You’re not _hard_ of hearing, not the way people usually mean.

If anything, you hear _too_ well. It’s easy to get overwhelmed trying to wring meaning out of random-seeming syllables, pick something called ‘words’ out of the slosh of wet meat, the clack of teeth, and the whoosh of breath that creates human voices. Your brain isn’t very good at deciding which sounds are important, what they mean, and why they’re happening. But.

Because of that lack of automatic prioritizing, you _notice_ sounds other people don’t a lot of the time. There’s no natural screening process, or...well, there _is_ , but it takes a lot for it to ‘kick in’ for you, and it doesn’t work the same as for other people. And you don’t exactly advertise that fact, since it tends to make humans uncomfortable to know that if you’re in the dining room, you can still hear the turds exiting their ass in the bathroom on the next floor unless they have the fan on.

You also don’t advertise the fact that a lot of the information you use to read other people doesn’t come from looking at their faces, or even reading their ‘body language’. You’re not great at reading expressions, although a lot of the time it helps to recall them when you’re processing a situation later. You also use pattern recognition, what they do and say as well as _when_ they do and say it, in order to navigate many social situations better than you might otherwise. But when it comes to doing that sort of thing in real time rather than retrospect?

What you do is pay very, very close attention to the way people _breathe_.

There’s a lot of information in there, and few think to control it. They rarely imagine they’re giving much away with it, and the tone of the way air’s drawn into someone’s lungs, the way it passes through their nose and throat, whether they hold it or push it out helps you recognize them almost as well as their face might. Better, in a few instances.

You know this huffing sound like the back of your hand, and you can recognize it from a few rooms away, too.

That’s _Frisk_.

And the other sound is a human voice, someone you don’t know.

You open the door the rest of the way, start creeping forward. You remember what Sans and Alphys have both warned you about wandering around in here, but… well, you probably won’t _die_ , at least.

You want to know why the hell Frisk is here at all, why they’re here _now_ , and who on earth they could possibly be bringing with them.

Sans and Alphys have made it clear they don’t plan to disclose to you what’s going on with the progress of whatever science she’s doing to The Stuff, to what degree Frisk or others are involved, or anything else that might give you a better idea of how long you all have left.

You know. That whole uh. Annihilation thing.

You’re already spending every minute doing exactly what you’d want to be doing if you could die anytime, since you’re not really a “bucket list” kind of person, and you’ve already done plenty of things you thought you’d never get the chance to. For you, the best times are doing your work of teaching and learning, caring for your friends and family as well as you can, trying to be and do better, being creative and relaxed, loving and being loved by Sans. You know he feels it too but it’s not a tension in his body, nor a brooding vibe around him. He’s not the type. There’s no desperation in him other than slight clinginess, and even that’s not as bad as it was right after The Thing happened.

It’s in the way his eyes follow things longer than usual, the way he stands closer to people. It’s something you feel a faint echo of in his soul sometimes when you touch him, or see in his eyes when you pull your bodies close and tight, make each other feel good. You don’t think he’s given up, but you can tell he still feels helpless to stop whatever’s going to happen. Even if his own actions might have hastened it somehow, you know he doesn’t want this to end. He doesn’t want to let this go, to let the life he’s worked to build for the last nearly thirteen years just get canceled out like it never happened. Sometimes he’s more like you than he gives himself credit (or recrimination) for, too.

He doesn’t want to let you go, and you don’t want to lose him either. But the patience that he can tap into to bear this uncertainty, to do whatever it is that he’s doing (waiting, according to him)… that’s not really in your skillset. For better or worse you are who you are, and you’ll do what you feel like you need to in order for your desired outcome to take place. So instead of telling Sans or Alphys what you suspect, you close the door as quietly as you can behind you, and walk slowly in the direction you think (you hope) the sounds are coming from.

Looking around as you step forward hesitantly, you notice again the seemingly directionless but dim light that fills the hallways all the way up the surprisingly high ceilings. The vibe here is oddly cavernous, and the bare ground reminds you of something. After listening to the way it sounds underneath the soles of your shoes, you realize that this might actually be Hotland. It’s not hot anymore, from what you know. Undyne had told you a lot of the heat that had given this place its (predictably unimaginative) name had been overflow from the Core, situated between Hotland and New Home. Now that the barrier's gone, the extra heat, light, and energy not only dissipates, but it’s also being used by a large portion of the rest of the world now.

You freeze when you hear the unfamiliar voice again. If you’re not completely wrong, you think you’re getting closer, but you still can’t understand what they’re saying. They switch between mild and argumentative, and of course if Frisk responds you can’t hear that at all. You only know they’re here because of their distinct huffing, expressive without words as always.

You think they’re trying to convince this person of something, and they’re trying to be quiet, or get them to be quiet. It makes you increasingly suspect that Frisk isn’t supposed to be here, that Sans and Alphys don’t know that Frisk is here, and that they certainly shouldn’t be bringing this unknown human here under any circumstances.

You know where you are, after all. No one’s come out and told you, but you’re not a fucking tree stump. And wandering around out here’s made it even more clear to you.

This is the Core or very near to it, and it’s monsterkind’s biggest gambit to bring about a future where monsters and humans coexist long-term with relative ease and peace. There’s no way they can afford to have humans mucking about, learning how to get in, or messing with anything inside. Not yet, at least.

You creep along, trying to get closer without actually overtaking Frisk and their companion, trying your best to catch bits and pieces of what the human’s saying. Something about “energy” and “origins” (virgins? surging?); something else that sounds like “Texas” and probably isn’t.

Frisk’s sounds don’t tell you much about what they’re saying, but they do give some insight into the situation. They sound stressed out, and like….hmm. It’s a little like when you’re explaining something to them they don’t really get, and are deciding whether or not they want to-

You’re so intent on listening for breath, you don’t notice when yours stops.

Shit. Oh, _shit_. You know that childish, polished-tin voice.

Flowey is here.

“Sometimes I wonder if this is your revenge,” he says in an empty tone that makes your blood run cold. “After all that time I kept you there, killing you over and over. I wouldn’t let you go… I remember that feeling, even if I don’t feel it anymore. Even if I can’t.”

You wish more than ever you knew what Frisk was saying.

“No,” Flowey says. “No,” he repeats, but he doesn’t sound upset. You do your best to come to terms with the fact that you’re one of the world’s worst candidates for eavesdropping attempting to do so on a conversation involving at least one person who doesn’t speak in a way that can be overheard at all.

Sometimes you seriously wonder what on earth happened to your impulse control. Maybe Sans’s _recklessness_ is actually sexually transmitted, if not his mannerisms. Because honestly? What the fuck are you even doing right now.

The other human says something again; you pick out something that sounds like “folly” or possibly “apology”; another sentence that ends in “-ology.” Oh. Science stuff. The study of things. Obviously.

“Well, I’m not _alive_ due to natural causes, so _no_ ,” Flowey says, dripping with smarmy sarcasm. “That’s not really an option for me.”

Silence, then a small but emphatic huff.

“I already did. Don’t _you_ want to find out? Maybe even make an honest monster out of MK? How long have I spent trying to get you to actually live your life, Frisk?”

Silence.

“Ha. You know the only way to do that is RESET. Are you really going to do that to everyone?”

The mystery human speaks, but Flowey cuts them off. You understand every word, even ones you couldn’t be gleaning from context since you don’t actually have any.

“Golly, I bet you _would_ , wouldn’t you? Well. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that’s none of your business.”

A realization makes your blood run cold all at once.

The only way you’d be able to understand someone you can’t see this well…

Is if he knows you’re here, and he knows you’re listening.

If he’s making _sure_ you understand.

“You could always ask the skeleton fucker what you should do,” Flowey says snidely, and you swallow reflexively with a bone dry mouth. “It seems like the only answers you want to hear anymore come from other humans.”

Fuck. You’re not _entirely_ sure why alarms are going off in your head, but once you realize you’re covered in clammy sweat you start backing slowly away from the corner without turning around. You might not be the best at thinking on your feet, but at least your instincts tend to function reliably, and you’re not about to ignore the danger your brain is very strenuously convincing you is there. The voice of the human gets even more garbled, and you try your best not to hold your breath so you don’t end up gasping it in before you’re far enough away that they won’t hear it.

You backtrack fairly efficiently, but when you open the door you thought was the entrance to The Hole…

Oh god. Shit, shit, shit.

This isn’t it.

You turn around and let out a muffled squeak of chagrin, because you’re greeted by the exact same tableau that’s inside the door you just opened. You look over your shoulder, and…

Yep.

Both sides of this door now lead to the same place.

You close it behind you in defeat, then trudge up to the breakfast table in the otherwise empty room.

You’re not very hungry, so you pick up the Rubik’s cube and leave the spaghetti where it is. There’s no chair, so you sit on the floor and puzzle it over.

Thoroughly japed, you wait for the other shoe to drop.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you liked the "a little brothy-er" joke i actually wrote that one just for this because i am a true bastard


	59. in living memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toby Fox – Memory  
> https://youtu.be/eijdNQMYikY

Rubik’s cubes aren’t really all that interesting, but you fiddle with it gamely as you try to calm down, or figure out what just happened, or maybe figure out what to do next. You realize how useless panic really is once the phone you completely forgot is in your pocket alerts you, and you dig it out red-faced, glad no one’s here to see your embarrassment.

**sans** : stay put for a sec

Well. It was only a matter of time before he noticed you weren’t in The Hole and checked to see where you’d gone off to. That kind of mystery doesn’t stay unsolved for long when you have extrasensory perceptions of...space. Whatever.

**You:** Frisk’s somewhere in here with some human science stranger

There’s no answer to that, but you didn’t really expect one. He probably did the same thing to check and see what else was out of place.

The second you put your phone away, an oversize golden flower pushes itself up from the ground and lashes vines around your wrist, preventing you from pulling it back out.

“I just want to talk,” Flowey drawls with narrowed eyes. Then his face gets drippy and mean. “Unless you want to reenact some of Alphys’s favorite videos before Sans gets here?” he leers, waving a few vines suggestively at you. “I hear he’s not the jealous type.”

“Just shooting the shit with you is already more excitement than I can handle every time,” you answer casually, trying to keep the fear out of your face.

Flowey laughs; he might as well since it’s true.

“So…it seems Frisk wants me to drink some kind of skeleton abortion goo and turn back into my lovable old goatboy self,” he informs you dryly. “I’m guessing I have you to thank for knocking up the trashbag in the first place?”

That’s certainly a way to put it.

“Well, it obviously didn’t work,” you manage, since the last thing you want to do is explain your sexual traumas to a whatever-Flowey-is. “The knocking up part.” You blink rapidly for a moment. “Do you actually have to _drink_ it?”

“I’d say I hope not, but I can’t actually feel things like _hope_.”

Flowey seems sincerely amused; _you_ hope that’s a good sign, since you do feel things like that. Not that Flowey doesn’t, but whatever little white lies get him through the day, you suppose.

“It’s not like Sans didn’t know what Frisk wanted to use it for. So, um… feel free to go ham on that?” you try, even though you’re pretty sure he doesn’t care about the _ethical_ implications here.

“Sans and I don’t exactly see eye to eye,” Flowey smirks. “But in this case, we want the same thing.”

“And what’s that?”

“That’s for us to know,” he flings back obliquely. “I want _you_ to do me a favor.”

“You have an interesting way of treating people you want favors from.”

More vines wrap you, then tug you down to your knees.

“I feel like I know the steps to this dance,” you comment, even though you know he can feel your hands shake with fear, and your legs shake with pain. His petalled visage gets closer and closer to yours, starts doing some pretty unfortunate stuff.

Your mom’s face, huh? Wow. You wonder how he knows, or if it’s some kind of magic mind-image thing, making you see whatever it is you _don’t_ want to see the most. Ohhh, _that’s_ how his face works-like those perforated plastic frame toys with all the blunt metal pins, creating a creepy monochrome reverse image of whatever you press into them. Except magic-organic, fuzzy flower center stuff instead of metal. It’s surprisingly effective at giving an impression of unspeakable suffering, and/or disturbingly nonspecific mutilations.

Then all of a sudden it clears, and he lets you go with a disgusted, dismissive noise.

“You really _are_ like Papyrus, aren’t you?” he gripes, having the gall to look like you’re disappointing him. “Nothing I threaten you with or do to you will get you to do it, so I might as well just _ask_.”

You let a tiny sliver of your frustration show for a second. “I mean...you could have tried that first, but whatever floats your boat.”

Flowey’s face gets even more scrunchy. “How are you the most _annoying_ parts of all the people who piss me off the most wrapped up into one?”

“Just lucky, I guess,” you answer slowly, not specifying who exactly is supposed to be the lucky one in this situation. “What are you trying to get me to do?”

“I want you to convince Frisk I can die of natural causes,” he answers shortly. “Or that any way I die counts as that, since I can’t do it otherwise.”

Well. That wasn’t what you were expecting.

“But you already told them you can’t.”

“I could be,” he laboriously forms what you think are meant to be air quotes out of slender leaves near his stem, “ _wrong_ , right? Ever heard of reverse psychology?”

You just stare at him for a bit, but nothing else happens.

“I’m not going to help you commit suicide when everyone else dies along with you, including me,” you point out, although it should be excruciatingly obvious at this point. “Are you convinced the Sans Abortion Goo won’t work, or are you just not interested in the results if it does?”

“I don’t actually have to pick one,” he points out reasonably enough for a psychopathic reanimated shard of a dead child’s soul being driven to increasing extremes of nuance by involuntary immortality.

“And even _you_ can’t possibly object to the ethics of making someone understand that grief is a normal part of life, and that eventually everyone dies… that they’re _supposed to_ ,” he adds, the barest edge of something you can’t quite put your finger on coming into his empty bell of a voice.

You exhale slow, and it only shakes a little.

“Frisk is pretty used to being able to decide exactly who lives and who dies,” you say slowly, although it’s not necessarily an objection. You don’t acknowledge that the vines wrapping you are now helping you actually sit in a relatively more comfortable position, even though they don’t let you go, or free your hands enough to reach your phone or summon your viewer. As far gone as Flowey is, he’s still culturally a monster. Spending time with him and Papyrus, however brief, was enough to make you see that once you fit it in with everything else.

His round, plant-fuzzy face is unreadable for a long moment.

“I don’t think I ever got used to that part when it was me,” he says, voice unreadable, too. “This kind of existence isn’t really the sort of thing you _can_ get used to.”

“Do you wish you could go back in?” you whisper softly, unexpectedly moved. Then you realize your mistake as his face twists with sudden, existentially deep rage. Oh… you had a good run, you suppose.

Then it just as suddenly dissolves into something completely different.

Oh. Right. Yeah… he’s not exactly stable, is he.

“One option is that I already did,” he says softly in a more normal tone of voice than you think you’ve ever heard from him. “Another is that I can’t, and that piece is just lost forever. And once _this_ ends,” his mouth quirks in a way that cuts, “well, that’s really _the_ end.”

You open your mouth, but he answers before you ask.

“I’m _tired_ ,” he emphasizes gently. “And I can’t let go. Chara won’t let me.” He smiles, and it’s almost...genuine? “Frisk showed me how to let Chara go, but when it comes to Chara letting _me_ go, Frisk is...biased,” he finishes with a glance to the side.

You can’t imagine it’s very easy to go against what your soul wants, is it.

“Why me?” you ask.

“Because Frisk won’t listen to me.”

“Who’s that human that was with you?”

“She’s the one who figures out how to make it possible for me to absorb something that’s technically magic when I can’t eat or drink anything, and we only have one try,” he informs you blandly. Your mind opens out like motes of light to move around something you don’t want to think about, and Flowey grunts in disgust.

“Don’t start that stuff now,” he groans in annoyance. “I thought you got over it already.”

“You can’t actually make me do what you want,” you remind him gently. “And I can’t do what you want if you break my mind. Or my body either, I guess,” you consider.

He makes another angry noise.

“How does it make any difference to _you_ if I break you now, or you try doing what I say and get annihilated anyways?” he gripes. “Dead’s _dead_. What do you have to _lose_ here?”

You blink softly at him.

“One of those is something _I_ do,” you point out like he’s a fucking tree stump, “and the other two _are_ _n’t_. Obviously,” you finish, blinking a few more times for good measure.

Flowey’s face drifts sideways.

“Integrity is officially the worst trait,” he says flatly. “I’m writing that down somewhere.”

“I don’t know why you think some basic grief counseling is going to be the answer to a problem that’s this fucked up and complicated,” you continue a little desperately. “I’m not even a psychologist. You...do _realize_ that, right?”

Flowey’s face changes, and you see a strange echo of your own desperation there. It makes your mouth dry again for sure.

“I know I may have… implied things,” he says, quick and quiet. “Like I know more than you want me to, or this is all old news to me. You might have noticed I do that a lot. _T_ _his..._ ” He goes unnaturally still. “Only Frisk knows for sure, but I think this really _is_ the oldest they’ve ever been. I don’t think they know what happens next, and _neither do I_. Maybe this time Frisk will finally listen. If not to me, than maybe someone...they _trust_ will explain again what I really am, and they'll...”

His voice turns to a hiss, and it’s disturbingly...intense. His face gets even closer, and you can’t look away.

“I’m a **memory** ,” Asriel whispers desperately. “Chara’s memory of Asriel Dreamurr, their sibling. Chara didn’t mean for me to die because of what they did, and they can’t stand it. You _know_ how Chara reacts to….” His eyes flicker away momentarily. “And Alphys didn’t _mean_ to make a vessel that could merge with something that can’t exist, like the _dust of a human soul_.”

You almost faint imagining your soul turning...to dust.

“Yeah. It’s not a great feeling,” he informs you flatly. “But that’s what happened. Asriel is _gone_ , and I’m _stuck_. Because of what I am, the only thing that wipes my memory is TRUE RESET,” he adds quickly. “SAVE and LOAD don’t work the same as RESET, and once the barrier is gone…”

He makes an odd noise, neither a laugh nor a sob.

“I’m in the same boat as everyone else once that happens. Because even the power of absorbing six human souls _and_ the soul of monsters wasn’t enough to bring Asriel back,” he explains fervently. “It just made me able to feel something besides what Chara _imagined_ or _remembers_ me feeling. It made me able to look how they imagined I would when I grew up, and later…to look how they saw me last. It made me able to feel what _those souls_ felt.” A flicker of something close to grief tries to happen in his face before it fades.

“Chara and I made a mistake when we were children.” He really is whispering now, and you forget how to breathe. “We don’t deserve to spend eternity suffering for it, making the same mistakes over and over for as long as time exists. Frisk deserves to _grow up_ ,” he says, barely audible, “instead of creating a forever where they try to make me go _backwards_ , try to undo something that happened before they ever existed.” He holds your gaze like a vise, but something in his face quivers madly with unexpected vulnerability as words gush out of him faster and faster. “And I deserve to die, so I can finally make up for what I did, or-” he chokes on nothing for a second, “or maybe so I can finally _live_. I deserve a chance to get it right, and I _can’t do_ _that_ like this. Papyrus does what he can, and I think with his help, I could even-”

His face changes suddenly, the mask of indifferent cruelty slamming back down over it.

“Well, you either will or you won’t,” he finishes in an unnecessarily snide tone, looking away shiftily. “You don’t-”

“What’s TRUE RESET?” you croak hollowly.

“It means I have to start over from the day Frisk fell with a nasty case of deja vu,” he says, clipped. “All of us back underground. I don’t know what it means for _you_ , and I don’t care.” His head snaps back to you, and the sudden intensity of his cold, empty gaze freezes you in place.

“And if they won’t listen to you either… _ **stall**_.”

He looks away again, and you suck in air desperately. Fucking hell.

“Sans is coming. Stay on your toes.”

With that, he disappears into the ground despite your shout of objection.

There’s a little puff of displaced air, and Sans appears holding the arm of a casually dressed woman with a ponytail. That’s all you manage to take in before Sans lets go, ducks lightning-quick, then does a hands-free diagonal cartwheel out of the way of the second swing she takes at him, barely missing as you hear your own yell of dismay. Then his slippered feet are back under him and his arm lowers sharply, following the momentum of his small, dumpy body with surprising grace. The woman hits the ground hard with a grunt. She stays there, moaning weakly.

You see the ring of yellow-cyan in his left socket flicker out, a hard white point coalescing there instead as he turns to look at you.

“heya, good lookin’. ready to blow this spaghetti stand?” he asks casually, neither winded nor seeming particularly afraid despite his extraordinarily recent brush with death. You totter forward a few steps and he takes your outstretched hand. You close your eyes, and when you open them you’re back in The Hole.

Alphys and Frisk are standing there in the middle of the main room, doing nothing in particular and looking extraordinarily casual.

Ohhhhkay then. This is a real shitshow, isn’t it.

“So, what the heck is going on?” you inquire mildly.

They both just stand there silently. Sans slumps in place like he grew up out of the floor, fixed grin amiable and benign. He looks half-asleep, in fact.

“told al we need to take a day off,” he says, hands firmly in his pockets.

“what happened, Sans?”

“nothin happened.”

Your eyebrows hit your hairline, and he just looks blandly at nothing in particular. Oh _shit_. He and Alphys had a _fight_.

“You and Alphys had a fight,” you comment softly.

“nah,” he says even more mildly.

Oh shiiiit. Apparently it was bad, too.

“So, we’re just _not_ going to talk about Dr Murderface Spaghettisauce down there, or ask what the fuck Frisk is up to right now?”

Silence.

“We’re just going to keep our secrets and let them rot us out from the inside until no one cares what happens anymore and we all get annihilated?”

Frisk’s hands come up. “Seems good to me,” they sign casual-defiant. Alphys just stares at the floor blank-faced and narrow-eyed; you don’t even know if she saw what Frisk said.

For a moment you’re so fucking angry a hot, metallic taste fills your mouth, and your vision blanks out. Then you take a deep breath, and it’s less shaky than you expected. You _really_ want to start yelling things, spilling guts and rattling cages, tell them all exactly what Flowey just told you, and doing whatever you think will get a reaction out of everyone in this room with you right now. You want them to _just fucking talk_ for a change, and that’s when you take another deep breath and look over at Sans.

He looks exactly like he just smoked about twelve blunts and would like nothing more than some piña coladas and getting caught in the motherfucking rain.

That’s how you can tell he’s even more pissed off than you are. He’s pissed at Alphys, he’s pissed at Frisk, and he’s utterly beyond the pale that some stranger came to stare and/or poke at his extremely upsetting Miscarriage Juice and promptly tried to kill him.

“I’m guessing you can’t tell whether Alphys doesn’t know what’s going on or just won’t talk, and Frisk won’t explain how the hell _they_ got in here, much less got some rand-o human to somewhere important instead of the spaghetti pit.”

He makes a noncommittal noise and shrugs. [If he gets any more chill, marimbas are going to start manifesting physically. ](https://youtu.be/P0WQh9l9Ar8)

“They can’t get Punchypants out of there without you, can they?”

“nah,” he drawls.

You rummage in your pocket, open a case one-handed and fiddle out a pain pill for the impending unpleasantness a certain asshole flower left seeded in your hips. You dry swallow it as Frisk stares at you, Alphys checks the floor for dogs, and Sans looks like he’s putting down roots.

“Welp. In that case, I just remembered it’s my day off, too.” You smile thinly at Sans, hold your hand out and raise your eyebrows. He huffs slightly as he takes it, and you both shuffle slowly past Frisk and Alphys toward the threshold of the “kitchen”.  
Toodles.

 

 


	60. an array of cunning stunts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [discussion of unhealthy sexual practices in the past, dealing with sexual trauma]
> 
> The Geraldine Fibbers – House Is Falling  
> https://youtu.be/w8tlM4RuHBA

When you open your eyes this time, it’s in the bedroom at your place. You can tell by the light and know by the day that Ange and the kids will be at the school until late, several more hours at least.

That… makes you happy.

“i really gotta keep reminding myself this sorta stuff’s not out of character for you,” Sans comments fondly. You turn around and look at him with a slow smile inching across your face. “every time i think there’s no way you’d-whoa!”

He cuts off as you squat down suddenly and grab his body low at the hips. His sockets round out, and he throws his arms around your shoulders with an exhilarated little whoop as you lift him up, then manage not to stagger as you carry him over to the bed. You turn around and drop down on your ass, his bone knees out to either side so he’s straddling you. The sound the bed makes when your combined weight hits them is loud, but you didn’t break anything. Or yourself, and that pill’s going to start helping any second now.

You look up slightly into his face and grin sharply. Yep. He’s super into it. Nice.

You slide your hands up between his shirt and his hoodie. “Can I take your tops off?” you ask, but he’s already shimmying his sweatshirt off, sockets narrowing with impending lust. He flips his slippers away and grabs your shoulders briefly to balance so he can do his little toe-trick, shucking the socks off his feet quickly. The hoodie hits the floor, his phone making a muffled thunk, and you fling his threadbare shirt somewhere on the bed behind you both. He makes a soft little grunting noise as your eager fingers thread through the spinal processes along his back, sliding his femurs apart to sit further down into your lap.

“Already hot for me, huh?” you whisper playfully.

“you really swept me off my feet,” he rumbles back much the same. “thought you- _ohh_ ,” he interrupts himself as your tongue slides quick and dirty right into that sweet spot between his clavicle and first rib. He caresses the back of your head encouragingly, arches into it with a pleased little sound. You feel his bones relax as you explore his upper body with increasing patience and your mouth, and he lets his sockets slip most of the way shut as he gives you a brief rundown.

“found the kid and dr pasta after i saw where you went,” he sighs. “think you know bout as much as i do. ‘m guessing something else happened too, but you can let me know later,” he exhales, and for him...that’s actually pretty adamant. Well, he can be as adamant as he wants, but you haven’t decided what exactly you’re going to tell him. You aren’t going to decide _anything_ until you’re calmer, and you’re delighted that a reason to put off discussing this in depth is presenting itself.

You wrap your arms around him and encourage him to follow you as you lie down on your back, legs still dangling off the side of the bed. You let go when he resists, but he leans in once he takes a moment to look at you.

The two of you are both angry and upset, torn up and frustrated, confused and hurt. But not at each other, and everything that can be done has been done for now.

“hope she likes rubiks cubes n spaghetti,” he says mildly, the barest hint of satisfied tightness around his sockets.

You blink, then grin broadly, rummaging in your pocket.

You produce the cube, wiggle it vindictively as his face loosens with surprise, then throw it at the wall with a little more force than necessary. He tilts his skull back and laughs easy and bright, and sighs vocally as he leans in over you.

“love you,” he whispers sweetly. “dunno why, but that makes me feel a lil better.”

“Love you too,” you say back. “Wanna fuck?”

“yup,” he says quickly.

You grab his iliac crest on either side and grind his pubic arch down onto your thigh, pulling him forward to hear his surprised, full-voiced groan.

“You like that?” you pant eagerly. He’s got his elbows locked to hold him up, but his skull’s bowed forward, wobbling loosely as you make him ride your leg.

“ _yeah_ ,” he gushes breathily, and you hear another noise catch in his nonexistent throat. “oh shit,” he adds faintly as you guide him in a little twist he does himself sometimes, smooth bones sliding easily on the slick fabric of his shorts. “whatever kinda mood this is, think i like it,” he manages after a bit, long since gone pliable and willing in your hands, letting you move him however you like as heat and increasing resonance gathers in his pelvis.

“I’m in the mood to take you apart until you can’t tell your ass from your elbow, then put you back together and fuck you til neither of us can move for the next 24 hours,” you blurt raggedly, then swallow and blush a little. “I, uh...”

“sounds like a plan,” he rasps, unbowing his skull to look into your face with broadened eye lights, appearing slightly dazed and incredibly turned on by your enthusiasm. You let his hips go reluctantly, then run your fingers up inside the legs of his shorts to caress him boldly, watching the broad not-discs in his sockets change texture wildly as you caress the magic that holds his femurs in their sockets.

“If you want that, then lie down right there,” you whisper, tilting your head over at the pillows. He nods fervently, then just sort of leans until he falls over neatly, flops onto his back and grabs the pillow to either side of his head.

You’re up on top of him almost as soon as he hits the mattress, and he shivers beneath you in anticipation. His sockets narrow as you caress his orbital bones, then slide down to toy with his chin. You keep your eyes following your fingers as you touch him possessively. His phalanges tighten in your peripheral vision as he watches you watch yourself touch him; whatever he sees in your face makes his breathing roughen considerably.

“yeah, touch me,” he whispers, and you feel his pelvis tilt up toward you. You don’t give him anything to rub against, and he makes an odd little sound between amusement and frustration. “got me right where you want me, huh?” He sounds pretty content with that situation, the slightest tremble under the teasing tone. You watch your hand slide down to his sternum, then toy idly with the little bumps where his ribs join it. His breath catches as you push your fingers between his ribs, then creaks tightly out of his nasal cavity when you slide in toward his sternum and rub against it, curving in and out gently. He grunts softly when you do it again with three fingers this time, and his pelvis tilts up when you curl them in to brush the inside of his sternum very lightly. He starts sliding one of his bare feet up and down as you go, spine curving idly in increasingly fluid movements.

“gonna tug me?” he rumbles shakily, and you finally look up into his face. It’s a complex expression: desire, patience, and something pained and expectant.

“Mayyybe...” You whisper, bringing your face close enough to his that he can feel your breath. “….eventually.”

“oh shit,” he says faintly, and this time when his pelvis seeks you, you slide your knee up between his legs. His quiet groan happens before he even gets his pubis against your thigh, and when it does you can feel that it’s soft and hot now, thrumming with magnetic resistance.

You pull your fingers out of his ribcage while he shudders wildly, then run fingertips down his sternum to his xiphoid process, trace the lines of his lowermost ribs around a few times. When slide your fingers just a little up the inside of his sternum, his sockets clench shut and he moans aloud, then curses softly.

“gonna touch me inside?” he whispers tightly, and squeezes your leg between his femurs hard; you feel them shaking, and the deep clack that goes through his spine sends a wave of heat to coil low in your belly. “oh fuck,” he breathes, “you gonna call me in there?” Hoo boy. You didn’t know you could do that, but it’s obvious he’s very excited by the prospect.

Instead of answering, you kneel up suddenly to a soft noise of protest from Sans, and pull your shirt off so it doesn’t get in your way. He open his sockets to look at you longingly, but keeps his hands where they are and his skull tilted to the side. Like he’s staying where you put him, and can’t wait to play along with whatever you’ve got in mind.

Welp. That’s really doing something for you.

You lean back over him, get close to his face and start touching his ribs again, sliding them in between at the spots he likes until he’s breathing heavy and moving around again. You watch him carefully as you caress the inner surface of his sternum an inch or so in; his breath shakes out softly.

“That okay?”

His nod is tiny but fervent, and he shivers with excitement when you kiss his face softly. He groans as run your fingers lightly up the inside of his sternum, and it’s like he finally breaks, wrapping his trembling arms around your shoulders like he needs something to hold on to and pressing the heat between his femurs against you tight. You keep going, caressing the inside of his ribcage here and there as he shivers and sighs, but the way he moves against you gets more relaxed and loose as he goes. It’s been a long time since you’ve touched him in here, but you remember how he seemed to find it calming then, too.

“What does it feel like?” you whisper, leaning in close to his face and watching the points in his sockets spread slowly. It’s making you feel easier too watching him, and he shudders again when you rub the back of his ribcage too, fingering lightly where ribs join his spine in the back.

“hard to describe,” he whispers back, a little catch in his voice as the tip of your finger rubs between the vertebrae he can’t reach himself. “but maybe… feels a little like how when…mmm. when you need a big hug and you get one… how it makes you feel inside…” he sighs, sockets slipping half closed. “cept it’s really _in_ there… in a sexy way,” he adds with a soft look on his face. Then his arms tighten, and his chin lifts with a soft moan as you try calling him, fingers lightly brushing the inside of his sternum. “an’ that feels even sexier,” he breathes as his sockets slide shut, then his arms tighten suggestively. He moans again as you lie down on him, pressing your chest to his.

“that’s real exciting,” he shivers out, breath shaking deliciously on your neck as he holds you tight against him. “feels like ‘m gonna jump right out for you,” he adds, then his voice cracks in a soft, wordless moan when you call him again. His breathing roughens, but it doesn’t seem labored even though you’re lying on him. “will you touch me?” he asks in the same shaky way he’s breathing, and you press your face to his before answering.

“Yeah,” you say, low and eager.

His hands slide down from your shoulders, tighten at your waist as you call again, then keep going until they grab your ass, still clad in soft lounging shorts. He wiggles until he can rub the heat in his pelvis on you some more; he holds your hips for leverage, his movements hovering somewhere between purposeful and aimless as you stoke his desire, body and soul.

It still amazes you that you can do this at all, every time half believing you’re imagining what you feel. This way it’s even more ethereal, the complex resonance inside his ribcage surging around your hand in a slow, curling wave as you stroke his slightly-less-smooth bone interior. There’s more going on with his magic in here than where he doesn’t have a belly, and he’s shown you a few hand movements he does in that space that can get his magic agitated anyhow. You’re generally very careful with his body anywhere that seems ‘inside’, and over time you’ve realized you can feel pretty reliably where ‘inside’ is, and to what degree. Speaking of which.

You turn your head toward his vertebrae, and he lifts his chin with an eager little sound; it becomes a big sound when you kiss and lick them, trying to push your tongue into the spaces between, where the magic’s too tight to let your body in at all. That’s when you pull, and you take your mouth away as his whole body shakes under and around you. The trembling, vulnerable cry he gives when his soul condenses makes you moan in response, and when you tilt your head down to look inside… here it comes, and there it is.

It’s right there inside him. It _is_ him; he’s inside himself, practically quivering as his magic oscillates through his soul, helpless and exposed for your touch. The sight is even more erotic than any way you think you’d be able to describe it.

“Holy shit,” you groan faintly, pushing your head into the pillow heavily to try and get a better view. The iridescent light of his soul complements and actually _does_ light the iridescent dark inside of his body in a way that no other light can...without dispelling that dark. You feel the sight of him like this burn into your memory; gorgeous and unforgettable.

“Oh, _Sans…_ ” you add, your voice trembling with an indescribable emotion. “You’re _so_ fucking beautiful.” You feel his tiny bone fingertips stroking the nape of your neck encouragingly, his other hands still squeezing your ass firmly as he pushes your thigh between his femurs insistently.

“please...” he begs quietly, voice dampened down to a thick mumble of desire. “want you to touch me, okay? i jus’...” He whimpers, and both his hands tighten on you as he shoves his pubis against you hard, then shudders against you there with a grunt. “want you _so much…_ ” he whispers, the note of astonishment coming into his voice that drives you wild.

“Do you want me to do it like this? In here?”

“ _yeah_ ,” he gushes, so you give him a little more leverage to move his pelvis as he moans appreciatively, lie on him hard and push your fingers into his soul. He moans and grinds against you, then settles back with a deeply contented grunt, because he _needed_ this, needs you _so much_. His sockets leak a bit; you’re so strong, and it feels so good. You also realize that because it’s inside his body, he’s already touching himself, which is why he didn’t make the louder noises he usually would when you touch alone.

He’s raw inside right now, frustrated and sad and a lot of other things, but this is exactly where he wants to be, and he’s doing exactly what he wants to be doing. He knows what’s behind your eagerness, he knows how much you want to take care of him, make him feel good. He moans and arches under you when you let him feel just how true it is. You spend a while just filling him with pleasure and love, stroking and soothing him, giving him just how much you love being inside him this way.

You know a mischievous little curl of a secret about to be disclosed; that’s not the only way you could be inside him right now. If you’re interested, he’s got a little something for you going on in his shorts. You lean up on an elbow to gaze into his soul, then his face. His sockets open slowly, the white points coalescing broadly inside as he smiles softly; it’s okay if you don’t want to. This is already better than good.

“I want to,” you assure him soft and quick. “A lot. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

He’s more than okay, he’s excited to share himself with you. Then you blink, unsure of the logistics of changing positions considering you still have your arm in his ribcage, and you don’t want to just yank it down and out like picking an apple… it seems disrespectful. He exhales in soft amusement, then holds you tight and rolls you both over on your sides. Then he takes your other hand and rests it on his sternum, lets you know you can pass it through his bones this way without losing contact. He winks. It feels pretty good, too. You look down, concentrating for a minute, then bring his soul towards your other hand; it passes right through so quick and easy it surprises you. Sans moans wantonly, stroking your forearm as all your fingers penetrate the luminous, iridescent surface of his essential self at once for a brief moment, then it’s through and you’re holding him safe and secure in your other hand.

He wraps his arms around you with a pleased, shivery sigh as your touch intensifies gradually; he lets you know how much he wants you to touch his genitalia too, that he’s already shed a little magic with how much he wants to feel you there. You hold his soul close between you, skating your fingers wide to soothe him, to let him feel the solidity of your presence. He puts his femur up over your hip to give you access, and you slide your palm over his iliac crest firmly while his sockets go half-mast, the points inside widening slightly.

He hopes you like it. You slide your hand inside the loose, stretchy waistband of his shorts and let him feel your desire as you make your way towards his pubis. He sighs in anticipation, tilting up towards your hand.

“It’s like mine,” you whisper in wonder and he smiles, soothes the back of your neck with his glassy-warm fingertips. “Except it feels like _you_ …and I bet it’s pretty like it always is when your magic does this.” Sans moans softly at the compliment and the rush of feelings you add to it, then grins a little breathlessly. It’s not fuzzy like yours though; too bad. He winks.

“I came to terms with skeletons being hairless a long time ago,” you grin, sliding your fingertips along his resonating, soft folds as his breathing deepens. You explore carefully and delightedly, noting that there’s even a firm little spot where a clitoris would be; he shivers and lets out his tiny coo when you touch it. He lets you know it’s very sensitive, but doesn’t feel exactly the same. He exhales in pleasure and amusement. In a way, his genitalia overall is like a clitoris, right? It’s not like it’s for reproduction, it’s just there to help him feel good, to share with you and make you both happy.

You let him feel _just_ how happy it’s making you as you continue exploring. Although it’s warm, it doesn’t feel like anything human; nothing he is ever has. His integral magic draws at your fingertips, and as you let him guide you, controlling the pressure and movement, you feel his magic start to spend itself into your skin. He moans and pushes harder when you let him feel how much you like this too, along with what it makes you feel that he shares himself with you this way. Looking so lovely and relaxed, his face dazed with pleasure and love.

The pleasure starts to get tense for him after a bit, and he lets you know he likes to be touched inside. It feels better for him that way: less sharp, more grounded. Will you put your fingers in?

“Yeah,” you whisper, then let out an explosive breath. You give him a rush of how much you want to do exactly that, how excited you are at the prospect of being inside him. You run your middle finger between his folds lightly, feeling for his entrance and making sure there isn’t the kind of friction you’d expect against human skin, since you have a tendency to just...absorb whatever he sheds. His breath shudders out of him roughly, spine curving as he presents his pelvis encouragingly. You feel a dip, push at it a little. Yes, that’s it. He wants you in _there_ …he wants to hold you tight inside his body while you hold everything he is right there in your hand.

He lets out a soft noise as you ease your middle finger into the hot little space behind his pubic bone. You slide in until the heel of your hand comes to rest against the front, but you feel a little quiver of something odd from him; you glance at his face in confusion. He pants and cracks his sockets open; he wants _more_. A lot more, but he’s not going to push you to do anything in a hurry; he knows you like to take your time with something new, even if this isn’t _exactly_ new. You curl your finger, and there’s that odd little feeling again.

Magic seethes across his skull when he senses your confusion, even though you aren’t really asking about it. It’s just… having things inside isn’t new to _him_ , and... for him being penetrated burns a little, especially at first. It always feels like that though, it’s _fine_. He makes a swallowing sound; you know a thought-sensation that’s a multilayered and simultaneous impression of things he’s felt inside him at once: hard-smooth-exciting, something pleasurably thick and hot, something less hot and painful, something too big that hurts even more, something cold and unpleasant, indifferent-uncomfortable, hard-nubbled-narrow then wider-better, moving-curving-better, each a marbled experience of pain and pleasure.

It’s the gist of things he likes and doesn’t like, all in a big lump-idea that slipped right out of him into you when he thought about how this feels, and you’re not entirely sure he meant for it to happen. There’s a soft tint of embarrassment; he didn’t, but he’s okay with you knowing that. Some of that was him touching himself, too, and he likes how this feels.

You stare into his sockets and move your finger a little, watch him gasp and push at you, clutching you tight and whining with need. You do your best to sort out what kind of things he’d like, since he seems to have a much better idea with this than some of the other kinds.

He pushes his body at you gamely, then another odd little thought comes through: this sort of thing had shown up more than others back when he was messing himself up, probably because it was his favorite. That makes him feel squidgey inside, and his expression grows sickly when it doesn’t go away. You pull your fingers out very gently and give him a little pet before taking your hand out of his shorts, then wrap that arm around him and pull him close, touch his soul reassuringly. His fingers join yours, pushing in between and around as his other arm wraps around you, seeking comfort.

Magic seethes in his face as he tucks his skull under your neck, flustered and a little upset. A hint of not-right and shame tries to happen, but he takes a deep breath, shuts his sockets and shivers it out. Bitter disappointment tries to happen; you were having such a nice time together before he went and ruined it. sans-the-skeleton’s cursed pussy strikes again. The bitterness of the epithet surprises you, but he gets a handle on that quickly too, and you help by letting him know you’re just as happy being here with him like this, being close, doing whatever you both feel like. Your press your face to his and give him a surge of your own patience; you’re not in a hurry and you have no issue with taking little breaks.

“Remember how we did the first time I found out you had genitalia?” You’re pretty sure that’s what the deal was then, too. You let him feel how you’d felt then, talking about it and being okay with anything he decided. You’d both had a nice break, talked about it honestly. He’d done what he wanted which was to touch you for a while, then you touching him in turn once he was ready for it. And it was awesome, wasn’t it. “It’s okay if you don’t want me to touch it right now. Or ever.”

He relaxes slightly. You know the score anyhow; he breathes out soft under your surge of arousal, calm, and love. The problem isn’t that he doesn’t want to be touched when his body’s like this. More like the opposite. He keeps his sockets shut and lets you know that genitalia things can go inside had been used more than others because he _likes_ being penetrated. His next sigh’s a little tight, but he manages. He’s sorry for being cagey about it, but he’s just embarrassed. He wants you to know him; not just the parts he thinks you’ll find palatable. You hug each other, and he exhales again.

He’d liked being penetrated because he’s lazy, and because it always hurt.

He had not been especially picky about where, or with what.

Being with you body-and-soul, experiencing the raw, heady sensation of your touch, has really helped him understand that although he does like very intense sensations, they don’t _have_ to be painful. They don’t even have to be rough or potentially dangerous. And he’d honestly prefer that they aren’t, since the way his body responds to that isn’t very pleasant, or at least he doesn’t find it particularly so anymore.

He used to, though. He thinks? It’s all so confusing and he still doesn’t entirely know what had driven (compelled?) him to do that stuff and just… keep on doing it. Well. He does and he doesn’t. A few tears slip out of his closed sockets as he cuddles up into you more. You give him a light squeeze with your arm along with how much you like holding him this way. You shut your eyes too, rest your head against his skull.

He makes a sad little noise after a bit; he’s been dancing around it for a long time, but… you should probably know.

“Know what?” you whisper, and he opens his sockets, pulls back to look at you.

What it feels like.

So you’ll have a better idea of what he ( ~~ _wants it_~~ ) doesn’t want ( ~~ _he wants it_~~ ). His eye lights flicker vaguely; he tenses his sockets a few times to clear...something. Anyways. He wants you to know what he doesn’t like, things that might cause that kind of feeling. Instead of just leaving them around like land mines for you to stumble across. ~~You blink~~ ~~it out of your eyes~~ ~~; okay, there it goes.~~

“The way you feel doesn’t bother me,” you tell him softly. You add a touch of how you feel to it, and he makes a soft noise of understanding. “I just understand that it’s bad for you, and it hurts you.” You lend him the soft, wobbly emotion it gives you that he trusts you with it; a tear threads across the bones of his skull.

“Remember that morning after you showed me your soul the first time?” His eye lights meet your gaze; he lets you know it’s a special moment for him, too. You let him feel how much you’d meant what you said about him not having to pile up all his traumas for you to sort through to get basic consideration, then you smile.

“Are you ready for advanced consideration?” you ask, then give him a rush of what that means to you: care, protectiveness, understanding, and attention. You’re _listening_ , and doing it with more than your ears. You lean in to kiss his zygomatic bone and give him even more: it’s okay to be how he is, and it’s okay for you to be how you are, too.

He exhales shakily, then closes his sockets and lets you know.

Oh. That _is_ a sharp feeling, isn’t it.

And it definitely hurts; both...chafing? and the pain-like-overstimulation type of pleasure it provokes. Then there’s another kind of pain-pleasure: too much, too hard, too soon. A flicker-memory-glimpse of his own dully impassive face reflected in a bathroom mirror above the sink he’s bent over right before he yanks his hood down to cover it makes you glad you can’t feel it, only know it.

He makes a dry sniffling sound; this… isn’t even with genitalia. Just sensitive bones and soft magic; just rough, impatient human bodies shoved in wherever they felt like. A shame-specter comes through: his purposely vague encouragements, the mask of indifference over pain, and even injuries. His apathy towards his human partners.

You bend your elbow so you can pet his skull, press with your fingers a little the way he likes.

“It’s okay,” you murmur softly. “I’m not freaked out.”

He shivers it out, breathes deep through the rush of arousal and aversion to let it pass through without digging its hooks in. Something in him balks.

“It’s okay,” you say right away. “You don’t have to show me everything now.”

He’d rather get it over with; he shifts a little and you notice shed magic’s soaking right through his shorts. He sighs again, because yeah. That’s part of the problem, too. He didn’t used to spend when he felt like this. Stayed pretty dry, actually, but… ever since his genitalia started coming out with you he leaks like a faucet, just like when he’s shared souls with monsters. Now it even happens when he remembers this stuff, too. Insult to injury, right?

Welp.

He makes a throatless swallowing noise. Here it goes.

What he shows you is more complex variation of the last scenario, this time with genitalia a lot like what he’s got now. Other stuff’s happening too, but he obscures that lightly since it’ll bother you a lot. There’s no mask of indifference here, just purposely wordless cries open to interpretation. The pain’s incredibly intense, and he’s coming sharp like a broken neck; he doesn’t know that then, but he knows it now. He exhales slowly and tries to show you a little more than the overwhelming sensations. (No wonder he hadn’t recognized what he’d felt with you as the same sort of feeling. It’s not.)

What he wants you to know are the subtle feelings happening underneath: he thinks he might really be dying this time, and he doesn’t care. He knows he’s injured. This is literally breaking him, and he’s filled with a strange, sick elation: he’s finally getting what he deserves. To be fucked to death by strangers who fear and hate what he is, and he’s _letting_ them, he’s _loving_ it. The way being treated like this makes him feel makes him sure he deserves it.

He shivers with the nauseating thrill: _he’s disgusting_.

Hmmm. That’s certainly upsetting, but he knows he doesn’t deserve that, and he never did.

“You don’t feel that way about yourself anymore,” you say quietly, give him a rush of reassurance.

He opens his sockets, looks at you soft and sad as tears stream out into the pillow. Moves his head slightly in negation. The reason he’s letting you know this is because it _works in reverse,_ too. That’s the part where humans come in; the part he hadn’t known would happen. Had no way to know it could. What he did and let be done changed his body a little for the worse because it’s continuous with his soul. Showed him something bad about himself and made it _physical_ , the same way love is physically part of him.

“You told me before,” you whisper softly. “It’s okay, I…” you trail off.

He meets your eyes for a long moment, and he doesn’t look happy.

You won’t really get it unless he shows you, so here goes.

He shuts his sockets, takes a deep breath and thinks-knows-feels as hard as he can:

** I’m  _disgusting._ **

He holds his breath to keep from moaning, forces absolute stillness into his body to keep from coming in his shorts and manages not to. Barely. There’s another feeling threaded all the way through it front to back that you’d call cramping or nausea if he had muscles or internal organs. It’s already painful.

This wanting burns a hole in him like acid, nothing like his soul’s sweet yearning or the bodily but gently directionless desire he’s felt with monsters. Nothing like the intense but wholesome physical pleasure he’s had so many times with you, although the closest was the first time he’d felt your climax by touching your soul; that’s part of why it had upset him, and seeing your blood had done the rest. It hurts even worse if he lets the tension go from this, and the worst part is inarguably how he feels _afterwards_.

You nod wordlessly when he finally manages to calm enough to open his sockets and focus on you again. He looks and feels vaguely ashamed; he can’t stop holding his breath yet or something might...happen.

You don’t want to say anything, and you don’t want to _give_ him this kind of feeling. But there’s something he already knows, and should know again. Luckily, you have a third option.

You put your hand to your chest thoughtfully and ask yourself a little question. When you feel the answer, you pull.

Iridescent white tinges with calming, steady blue, and Sans lets himself exhale very, very slowly.

He meets your eyes, the points in his sockets pinned with the sharpness of his arousal instead of blending out soft the way they do when he gets turned on with you. Very little of what he’s been sharing with you resembles the ways he feels when you touch him, when you make love with him. But that doesn’t make those other feelings go away, and sometimes they show up without being invited. He’s accepted that his body gets aroused, he gets wet with shed magic from touching just like monsters with genitalia...because that’s what he is. You can tell it’s a lot harder for him to accept it happening from remembering those things and feeling like this, though.

You pull your joined fingers gently out of his soul and look at him.

“Sans,” you say softly. He’s already looking at you; he waits quietly. “Sometimes your body just feels things, and does things. It’s still… it’s...” You sigh. And when it comes down to it, you can relate, can’t you. And he doesn’t necessarily understand that you do, maybe the same way you didn’t quite until he showed you. Maybe you should just show him, too.

“Look,” you say softly and he does. A tiny sob emerges from him. He’s seen it before, he’s felt it in you.

You wish to god it didn’t make your body do this, but it does.

“ _Look_ ,” you repeat, let it flow up for him to see even better and feel a surge of wetness happening between your legs.

“i see it,” he whispers tightly, makes a soft, dry sniff. You coax your souls closer, move your fingers down to his wrists and let him cup you both between his steady skeletal hands.

He’s not alone. Not right now, and not in this, either. Maybe you can deal with this together instead of hiding all the goddamn time and telling yourselves it’s for the best.

It’s complicated, isn’t it? Simple from the outside, though.

“Do you want to try it together?” you whisper.

His face somehow manages to quiver, even though it’s hard bone. Even though his grin is fixed there, flattened at the edges. He nods with a little hiccup.

“Keep us safe, okay?”

He exhales explosively and nods again as he rolls on to his back. You stay close so you don’t call your soul back into yourself inadvertently, reach down to slide and worry his shorts off, noticing the points in his sockets finally expanding as you shimmy yours off even quicker.

“If it starts to bother you too much, just look at me instead, okay?” You don’t mean your face, but you still smile encouragingly for both your sakes as you kneel up over him, then lean over on your hands. You feel a tinge of anxiety, and his eyes dart between your face and soul to check on you even as he wraps a leg around your waist, ready to have sex the way you do when he’s just sweet bare bones. You shift your weight to one hand to caress his skull tenderly, shut your eyes and sigh it out. He’s seen it already. He knows it’s there.

 _He_ doesn’t think you’re disgusting.

He doesn’t think you’re gross.

“love you,” he whispers tightly. He can see how you feel.

“Love you too,” you reply softly. “Ready?”

“yeah,” he breathes, then moans sharply as your genitalia presses slickly against his. Your voice joins his when you slide it across, then again as he spends against you, moving in your grip urgently in a different way than usual.

Ohhh… this is _not_ going to take long, is it?

“’m gonna try to wait for you,” he whimpers. “do it together, then try n ease it up?”

“Okay,” you breathe, then you reach down to hold tight to his pelvis, tilt him a little, and go to town. He’s so _soft_ there right now, and you can tell he feels the same about you even though you can’t see how he feels in his soul. You sniff a little, scrub at your face with the back of your hand quickly before gripping his pelvis again. This feels quivery and strange, intimate and heady and also….something. You’re not sure.

“s’okay,” he whisper-sobs, grips you a little tighter with his leg. “me too, okay?” He follows the reassurance with a quiet, choked moan.

It truly doesn’t take long, and you crack your eyes open to make sure he knows from looking. He does.

“’m ready,” he grunts, and you let go at the same time. It’s tight and sharp for you, and you wonder if his climax feels like that too. From his streaming sockets and the short, brittle yelps he makes, it probably does; he probably feels sick like you do as soon as the tension eases, so you let go of his pelvis and give him your hand, panting roughly.

You both moan in relief as your fingers slide into your souls. You flood him with how you feel about him, he gives you what he feels about you. It’s harder to hate yourself when someone else loves you so much, when they can make you feel it, can make you know it in a way you can’t ignore. You manage to lie down on your side without joggling everything too much, then squirm closer until your knees are touching, breathing steady and soothing each other as you calm. His hand slides under your neck, keeps going until his arm’s around the back to pull you close in the crook of his elbow, nuzzling you gently, sockets half closed as he pants through the tiny gap between his upper and lower teeth.

One of the things he does when he feels overwhelmed or afraid is push a little magic in; just the tiniest amount to soothe and pleasure. He wants to know if you want that too. It feels different when he does it like this. You stare into darklit blue and iridescent cyan-yellow-white. Yeah. You want to.

He doesn’t build up when he does it like this, and he doesn’t make a noise, just a tight little exhale that blends out soft as he spreads his fingers and rubs a little, like he’s massaging it in. It helps him remember that _this_ is his body too. His magic comes out to help him feel good, goes in for the same reason, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Even when it reacts in ways he doesn’t like, even when he’s convinced that he’s sick, he’s ( ~~disgusting~~ ) messed up, this reminds him what he’s really made of, and he lets you borrow that feeling, too. He makes a little noise after all when he feels how it helps you; his sockets leak a little as he traces your face with his nasal bone. When your tears touch each other’s eyes they make you see him in odd colors and shapes, yours let him taste you in a way he doesn’t have context for either.

He stops pushing with a shiver and sigh; turns out sharing his magic this way makes it better, too. Makes it harder to feel dirty or shameful, makes it...okay. Like how you feel when he gives it to you; it doesn’t make the bad feelings go away, but it helps make room for them. Helps you be okay with it.

He pulls back to look at you, despite the magic in your eyes you can see his expression just fine. He lets you know: he wants to keep going if you do. It’s not fair to forego pleasure that might be had by both of you if you still want to. You smile, pull your joined touch out of your soul, shiver a little as you put it back where it goes.

He sighs with mild regret; most of the other genitalia he’d found himself with he’d tried and then ignored. This kind...not so much, and part of him still feels all the things that have been in there. You know; he showed you. And he guesses all the kinds you can put things inside…

He tilts his head back and opens his sockets to look at you. His eye lights flicker, then he straightens your fingers together to pull them out of his soul; he looks like he’s thinking very hard.

“gimme a sec,” he whispers after there’s already been about two and a half minutes of silence.

He curves your touches back in after about the same amount of time, lets his forehead touch yours again, nudges it gentle like a kiss.

The little pocket; the kind without anything in there. Any time something like that showed up...he left. Couldn’t stand the idea of anything bad happening to it, or anything gross going inside there. Then he lets you feel something quivery and protective, like he wants to keep something safe. He rolls his skull into you gently with a shiver. This is a private emotion; part of who he is to himself. This is tender and new for him, feeling like he wants to take care of his body, help it trust him again.

What he’s letting you know makes you think deep and make a few connections. You hesitantly let him feel how what he’s got now… feels similar to yours. When you touch yourself, when he touches you. He gasps soft against you; that….helps? Ohh...it feels _good_. He pulls his own fingers out of his soul and pushes yours in further; moans and shivers as your touch intensifies. You let him feel it again, calm and steady. Let him know he can feel like that, too.

It actually...really helps?

“It’s because you’re borrowing from how you feel about other people,” you say softly. “Taking care of them, letting them take care of you…. that helps you learn how to do it for yourself sometimes.” You can feel the tender fern of understanding uncurling inside him, and wave of desire along with it. Now he just has to water and care for the former, and you let him feel how much you want to help with the latter. After a minute of thinking about it, you share the way arousal still coils low in your belly, and the tinge of protectiveness and closeness you feel threaded throughout.

“You can still feel the things you like, though,” you inform him. “Or...I can show you things _I_ like, too,” you add, and grin as you give him how some of them feel.

He finds himself remarkably interested in whatever is making you feel like that.

“You like intense stuff, right?”

He does.

“You like being touched inside, but you don’t want it to hurt,” you confirm, and he nods. No more than it has to. You think for a long minute, touch him in ways you know he likes while you do it, get him sighing and moving a little.

“Do you want me to tell you exactly what it is, or do you want me to try it a little at a time and see how you like it?”

He hums softly, the points in his sockets quivering wider as he considers the possibilities. Being surprised with something nice is a fun game even (especially) when it’s also something intense; it’s a game he likes, and he trusts you.

He wants that second one.

You smile and let him really feel your excitement; his sockets get round, then drift into anticipatory teardrops. You tent your leg up to open his more, run your fingers along his soft folds for a minute (so delicate, so _ready_ ; you moan together when you share it), then push inside with two fingers this time. This isn’t dry, and his magic doesn’t create drag against your skin. He makes a quiet noise of surprise; apparently coming eases it up for him, too. This feels barely-there, doesn’t hurt _at all._

You mentally adjust your expectations, because you’re noticing that while the smoothness(?) of his magic makes extra lubrication mostly unnecessary, it also requires more movement to generate the sensations he likes. You let him pull your bodies even closer until your faces touch; there’s a small space between you where you hold his soul, a curved finger deep in the cleft to make sure he’s open, letting him feel you as much as he can. He lets you know he’s feeling receptive and relaxed, excited and close to you. His smile softens in a way that makes your soul feel fluttery; he feels exactly how he wants to be feeling right now.

“You still want more?” you whisper, and give him another shivery rush of just what you have in store for him. He gasps again, then moans his breath out hot over your lips as you curve your fingers, pull a little from the shoulder.

He pants wildly; he wants _whatever_ you have for him, whatever makes you feel like _that_. Holy _shit_.

“Nothing too out there,” you whisper gently. “Just thought I’d show you that I know my way around something like this, if that’s okay with you. See if I can get you to make that sound I like.” A little bird cupped in your hand, so delicate and warm, shivering like its tiny heart will break unless it lets its song out, beautiful and sweet.

He whimpers in delight as he grips up into the pillow passively; you _really_ know how to sweet talk him, with words and otherwise. It sure is doing something to him, and he’s ready to take whatever you’ve got. You test your shoulders with a little shimmy, then smile again as you roll on top of him one smooth motion. His sockets widen as you giggle softly.

You got _moves_ , huh?

You give him how that makes you feel, and he shudders and groans as you beckon him inside, then gasps as you waggle side-to-side.

“Can I ask you a question?” you whisper as he holds on to you with arms and legs.

You can.

“Remember that time you shared the little pocket with me?” Surprise blooms; then he shows you something positive that you’re hard pressed to really categorize. “Mmm,” you sigh, “what did you like about it?”

He pants as you pleasure him teasingly, enhancing his desire more than satisfying it. You weren’t kidding, were you? His sockets slip shut as he lets you know something shivery and open, your hand inside petting insistently. The movements make a very pleasurable suggestion until the genitalia decides to pet itself by fluttering; the fluttering’s enhanced a lot by continued stimulation in the pocket, but it’s a feeling that happens all over. A cathartic wavering from the top of his skull to the base of his spine, central to distal on hands and feet, spread out like ripples across the surface of a still pool.

You curve slow inside him, watching his face and thinking about how much you love him as he shares how this feels now: tight and intense, centered in his pelvis.

You pull your fingers out slow and easy, watching him pant and whimper in protest. You raise your fingers to your lips, and his sockets widen as you lick them, push them into your mouth with a little wink. It doesn’t taste like anything, any magic he’s shed has already been absorbed, but you like doing this anyhow, and you can see that he’s fascinated. Then you give him a layered feeling of your own: how it feels doing what you’re about to do to someone, the way it feels done to you, the sensations he’d felt in his little pocket, and the feelings he’s having right now….then overlaid gently with the first time he’d ever put his fingers inside you, and the broad soft wave he’d given you that feels like his ocean.

His sockets go perfectly round as his eyes lose focus; he pushes his skull back into the pillow as he pants and writhes slow and aimless.

Any and all of those. Yes please.

You take your fingers out of your mouth, slide them down his sternum as you grin softly. His deep voice chases his breath in anticipation, and your dangle your fingers against the outside of his genitalia lightly. He pushes up at you greedily, but you dance back to tease as he makes little noises, lets you know a wave of quivery yearning.

“knock knock,” you murmur impishly.

His head tilts to the side, and one of his sockets slides shut as he peers at you incredulously. You’ve got to be fucking kidding him, and holy shit are you ever doing both. You exhale in arousal and amusement, then repeat yourself, still teasing.

Fff _fuck._ Who’s there?

“Open,” you whisper, dipping teasing fingers into his entrance lightly, then pulling away as he arches to follow your fingers. He likes this a lot, and lets it go on a little while before he answers. That’s all to the good; the hotter he is for this, the better. You also file away that little bit of information for the future: he likes being teased. Makes sense, considering he likes to take his time, draw it out. You feel a wave of tenderness when he lets you know how much he likes this, the way you’re not just good at sex, you’re creative: full of games and jokes, emotions and sensations he never even considered. You circle and dip, let your fingers spread to brush across the outside one by one. You repeat that for a while, then press them together to rub his little bump.

His sockets narrow as he quivers violently, leans into your fingers and lets his desire flood him completely with a deceptively quiet, breathy noise.

Open who?

 _You_ , you think to yourself. “Open you like this as much as I did,” you say out loud, and he growls like the first time you touched his soul as with a little push back-and-up, you slide four compressed fingers right into the tight space inside his body. He tenses at your knuckles, but when you fill him with a rush of _soft-open-careful_ he lets out tiny coughing sound and shudders out relaxed; they slide in all the way to the last joint and tuck right up behind his pubis, snug and secure like they were made to fit there. Not too bad considering your fingers are nearly twice as wide as his are. He exhales shakily, lets his sockets slip shut, and-

He squeezes you, and he makes that noise again because holy shit. Ohhhh shit. This is like...okay yeah, he’s never felt anything like it. It’s a _lot_ ; oh-so-close to too much. He rasps his radius over his forehead, rubs your shoulder as he pants and acclimates, shivers out a little more of the resistance and gets used to the feeling. It _seems_ like the kind of thing that should hurt, but it still _doesn’t hurt at all,_ and… Huh. He _loves_ it?

He squeezes your fingers again and this time he moans soft instead of growling, his hand leaves your shoulder as he moves just a tiny bit, then settles back. You were right. His whole body feels so open and shaky, stretched tight and incredibly full all at the same time. (How does it not hurt? He doesn’t care) He can feel how you’re in there _for him_ , filling him up and letting him get used to it, helping him relax so you can give him those shivery, amazing feelings you let him taste before. His breathing’s getting rough now, and physical desire’s pooling back in him so fast he’s reeling with it. He doesn’t even have to move to feel you, it’s steady and thick with _presence_ ; feels solid and warm and good like an echo of your touch in his soul, strong-intense-careful, and...ohhhh.

He lets out a shaky little hum because _that’s_ what’s so good about this; it _feels like you._

He cracks a socket open to peek at you with a tiny, tight noise.

Will you keep going if he puts his soul back?

You blink, and you realize one hand’s clutching at your forearm and shaking a little, the other’s twisted itself beyond human limits into the pillow beside his head; he lets you know just how badly he wants to push this. And also that he doesn’t actually want to push this, just feel it. Just lie back and take it, whatever you’re willing to give him for as long as you want to.

“Can I kiss it, too?” you whisper softly, and he lets you know exactly how he feels about _that_ in a hectic rush, then pushes your hand back towards his chest rather quickly with an excited, tiny noise. He coos sweet and clear like a little dove as it floods back in, then gasps as his involuntary movements stimulate him even further.

“dunno what this is,” he whispers tightly once he calms a bit, “feels really different. this doesn’t….feel like it used to, so i don’t...don’t know...” He pants quietly for a second, then moans again as you rub what you can of his left superior ramus with your thumb, right where it blends out into his magic. “want you to keep going,” he adds, low and rough around the edges. “it’s good. real good.”

“You look so beautiful like this,” you tell him softly.

He whines tight, sockets slipping shut as he arches gently into your hand. “please,” he whispers, lifts his chin with another tiny sound as his hands squeeze rhythmically into the pillow, bunching it up awkwardly as he twists in anticipation. “...please?” Like he’s not entirely sure what he’s begging for, but he knows you can give it to him.

You smile, move down now that you’re not touching his soul anymore, and huddle comfortably between his wide-spread femurs. You take a nice long look, even thought he’s starting move aimlessly, continuing to beg softly. Your fingers disappear into impossible darkness, smudge-soft charcoal folds distorted wide around them and glistening invitingly with subtle colors. You stroke them with your thumb to hear his lovely sounds, he shudders deeply and squeezes you again like you’d hoped he would so you can see. It doesn’t look like when this happens to a human’s body, and it doesn’t feel the same, either. It’s more...shivery? He’s very soft inside, and it’s tight without having the same kind of friction skin does.

He gasps when you blow lightly on his genitalia, then shouts wordlessly when you slide your tongue right over his little bump.

“ohhhh, fuck,” he hisses when you do it again. He cries out sharply when you flick it repetitively with your tongue, then deeper when his movements shift your fingers. “w...what are you _doing_ to me,” he pants weakly, and you pull back to glance up quickly.

“Do you want me to stop?”

He’s looking down at you dazedly; he shakes his head with wide sockets, then struggles up until he’s sitting back, leaned on the heels of his hands. “’s a good thing,” he adds belatedly. “jus’… okay if i watch?” he asks a little sheepishly. You’re not sure there’s much to see except the back of your head, but...

“Of course,” you say softly against his magic, and he shudders tight and sighs it out again. You rub your hair against the inside of his femur playfully while you gaze up at his dumbfounded, fascinated face. “I love you,” you sigh helplessly, and his expression softens even more.

“love you too,” he replies, then sighs as he flutters around your fingers. “fuck,” he adds, sockets listing again. “that’s…a _lot_ ,” he whispers, skull tilting back a little. It snaps forward when you blow on him gentle again, and he hums shakily as you kiss him above where your fingers penetrate. You wrap your arm around his pelvis and stroke the back of his sacrum, squirm between his body and the mattress to tease at his sacral hiatus, thrilling at his shivery little noises.

“’s almost too much,” he pants softly, “but in a good way…”

He seems like he’s getting a bit more tense than you’d like him to be, and you pull back for a minute to ask him a question.

“Want me to make a ‘b’?” you ask impishly.

His sockets go round, he nods down at you fervently. “think something’s gonna happen,” he pants, “not sure wh-”

You straighten your compressed fingers until they’re parallel as he gasps, then push them in a little more. “ _ohmygod_ ,” he gasps as you wave a teeny-tiny hello, then bucks forward into your hand, “its, it’s-”

He cuts off with a surprised little grunt when you beckon him inside, and you shove your soft mouth back on him and do a few things with your tongue he likes on bare bones; they seem to be a hit when he’s like this, too. It’s not very long before he quivers hard and deep around your fingers, then relaxes suddenly. He sits up more with a ragged gasp; here he goes.

You waggle your head back and forth insistently, tongue firm against him as you taste his spicy magic shed into you, then a low, guttural noise pushes out of him in waves as he tilts up into your mouth. He spasms tight and sudden around your fingers but you hold him open to keep the feelings nice and loose for him; the spasms ripple out when you make a twirl to remind him of his little pocket. Your arm tightens around his pelvis to support him as he lifts it and leans back on his hands, and you keep coaxing that lovely music out of him along with another little taste of spent magic as he bends forward again.

Magic from his sockets patters down into your hair, sinks right into your scalp as he just keeps on making that sound, and you work your shoulder with fingers curved up inside him now, pulling gentle and slow against the deep, shimmering waves happening inside his body. Your jaw’s getting a little tired, but something you were hoping might happen is in fact, happening. You’ve had a sneaking suspicion that he may just contain multitudes regardless of genitalia style.

He mewls when you pull your mouth away, then lets out a shuddering, loose exhale when your hand slides into him all the way up to the thumb webbing; the heel comes to rest against him outside. You kneel up with a little lurch, wrap your arm around his shoulders and give him a quick kiss on the teeth, then lie him back and spread his femurs even wider with your leg.

The astonished, adoring expression on his face as he slides his arms up around your neck eagerly makes you feel like if you were annihilated right that moment, you might not even care. You could die happy seeing that look.

“Now that you’re started you might just keep going,” you inform him breathlessly. “Does that sound like fun, or too much right now?”

“want you to keep going,” he whispers tightly. He hugs you, then clonks your shoulder lightly with his frontal bone before settling back with a vocal sigh.

You give a pleased little hum. “Let me know when you want me to stop, okay?”

“don’t _ever_ stop,” he groans, the pips in his sockets blending out until you’re pretty sure he can’t really see you anymore.

“Let me know,” you repeat insistently, then kiss his vertebrae softly, reminding you that oh yeah, your jaw’s tired. You lean away so you can see his face, then start pulling gently again. His chin tilts up and back as that little crease appears between his sockets, and he exhales like all the air’s being pushed out of him. There’s even a little creaking sound that reminds you of actually opening a drawer instead of just making the motion; it ends in a whimper as you give your wrist a subtle twist.

“ohh…. oh god,” he whispers high and surprised, and his sockets click shut hard with a little grunt as you switch to shaking your hand sideways with the heel shoved against the outside, letting him feel _just_ how full he is and rubbing hard on his firm little spot at the same time. This time it hits him harder; he shouts breathlessly as he bucks into you, wraps his legs around you too. You brace your elbow on your own hipbone as he shoves up hard enough that you need to. “oh _hh,_ _shit_ … fuck _me_...” he gasps between desperate little sobs. Once they wheedle out and blend together, you switch back to drawer-pulling against the gentle aftershocks.

Hmm. Maybe it’s time for the next letter of the alphabet. You push in even closer until you can touch his face lightly with the tip of your nose; he keeps his sockets shut but cries out again when he feels your hot breath on him.

“it’s so good,” he cries brokenly, then takes a moment to hum and pant while you kiss his face, go down underneath into his vertebrae eagerly, pretty much guaranteeing yourself a sore jaw. “is, is this…am i _coming_?” he whispers deep in his nonexistent throat, driving you fucking crazy.

“Yeah,” you confirm softly. “You want to do that some more?”

He just pants vocally for a few seconds, head turning to the side to touch his frontal bone to your upper arm gently. Then he nods decisively.

He shivers and creaks while you give him more, cries “oh _shit_ ,” when you rub the little bump above his opening with your thumb. “…fuck me,” he whispers again, and you’re not sure if it’s a request or commentary.

“You _want_ me to fuck you? you offer, breathing hard. “For real?” He gasps when you waggle your hand side to side.

He keens quietly, clings to you in desperation. He still doesn’t open his sockets, but he doesn’t seem anything but incredibly turned on; he’s relaxing into you open and soft instead of tense. “…wh-whatever _for real_ is, ’s _definitely_ how i want you to fuck me...” he rambles breathlessly.

“Okay.” Your voice shivers with emotion; he hums plaintively when he feels your body shiver too. “Let me know.”

You go up on one knee, use the other leg to push his femur up and out; now you can use your thigh to brace your elbow on for him to push against and spare your shoulder a little. You balance up on the other elbow, wrap your arm more firmly around and under him so he feels secure and close, and lean in as much as you can to touch your face to his. Then you make your hand into a ‘c’, make sure your thumb’s pressed against his little bump, then bend your wrist repeatedly and insistently.

His sockets fly open at that; the guttural noise happens again almost right away, so you try moving in and out along with the curving motion, flicking your thumb across when you pull back. His sockets slide to half moons, filled with his translucent eye-points. His growled whisper barely manages to exit through his teeth, just tiny little wisps of voice between his heaving breaths, but you know what he’s saying.

_please._

 

He makes little gasping sounds as his teeth part, and he pushes his body up into your hand rhythmically. You take your cue from his movements: he wants more friction. His body’s so...smooth? Soft? You have to move more to create the kind of sensations he wants. The strangest part is that it’s not wet, not the way you’d expect, since his magic just tingles away into the space between your atoms. But there’s a slick tightness to him that’s driving you absolutely wild; his magic’s dense with magnetic pressure all around your fingers, flexing and fluttering. He’s so responsive and enthusiastic, and the way he begs has you reeling. You try something more like a thrusting motion, and since there’s no mistaking the surprised gratification in his cries you keep at it, gentle but insistent.

“heh-here it comes,” he chokes out blindly, and then he does. Then _a_ _gain_ , a tortured wail gushing out tight between his teeth as his arms squeeze you tight, but his body’s got even more give than before below the waist. You keep on going even after he spends a bit more, then waggle side to side to test it. Hmm. You think about the way he’d soaked both your pants the time something like this had shown up before; the way shedding had even loosened the magic in his pubic symphysis after the genitalia itself had...melted. He might want to keep going until that happens, so you ask.

“More?” you murmur temptingly, moving your fingertips in a wave like you’re playing a piano.

He keens raggedly, pushes his head back so far into the pillow his frontal bone almost touches it.

“Let me know,” you repeat, and he moans softer, opens his sockets a little and tries to focus on you.

“do it more,” he begs shamelessly, punctuated with broken sobs. “love me hard, okay?” He jerks his pelvis to fuck himself on you with a soft grunt, then again quickly. “jus’ like that,” he whispers between greedy little noises, snapping his hips up, “oh fuck, _please_ …”

You pull back to give him what he asked for, and it turns out he’s spent enough to get your thumb in, too. His sockets go to slits, and he breathes out a shuddery little growl as you make sure he’s filled up nice and tight. His smooth, flexible hand finds the back of your neck and squeezes briefly.

“it’s good,” he gushes, voice breaking. “outside’s too sensitive now, okay?”

You’re panting with exertion as you concentrate on penetrating smoothly and quickly; he gets even floppier but manages to keep one leg around you, helps you out a little by arching up to meet your hand.

“Like this?” you pant, moving in and out a little extravagantly.

“ _yeah_ ,” he chokes shortly, sockets closing the rest of the way. “o-ohhhh f-fuck,” he sobs out, shaking and stuttering until he almost sounds like Alphys. “g-give it to me… oh _hh_ , jus’ like _that_ ,” he grunts desperately as you pick up the pace; he keens again when you change the angle, sliding in until you feel resistance against your fingertips. Huh. You weren’t sure if this had an end, but apparently it does, he’s just narrow and deep. His noises get strangled as you test his depths, but he nods frantically at your inquiry, opens wide and presents into it to make sure you _know_ he likes what you’re doing. You glance down; you still can’t see anything except shimmering, iridescent darkness looking into him from this side of his pelvis. You hear yourself moan, then curse softly as you press your face back to his bones.

“You’re _so fucking beautiful_ ,” you hiss against the side of his skull, but his voice just cracks plaintively as his arms tighten around you; he’s apparently beyond words at this point.

He gets more excited as you go, crying out with every thrust, moving sharply to meet you while broken little pieces of sound spill out of him. His hands start curling and uncurling against your back, neither clawing nor petting but a little like both. He’s moving around a lot but his whole body feels looser, in his bones and around your hand like he’s trying to take as much as he can, so you take deep breaths for the endorphins and obligingly fuck the everloving _shit_ out of him.

This time when he comes he goes limp with a voiceless exhale of utter surrender, then makes a choked noise as he spasms tight and sudden. The magic he spends gushes out over your wrist as you slip it in as far as it’ll go, his body pulsing weaker around your hand. He inhales deep, neck curving back until it looks painful.

You pull back and fuck him open all the way to the core every time his body tries to close around you; he sobs in slow motion, his full-voiced cries pealing out like his heart is broken as he shakes like a sheet in the wind.

You moan along in sympathetic pleasure, drawing it out for him until his genitalia’s spent out completely, loosening with a few odd little quivers, then just..melting.

You stroke the inside of his pelvic inlet gently once it is, one of his legs sliding off you with a loose clatter as he moans dazedly, still tilting his pelvis weakly up into your touch. His devastated face is streaked with magic as he hiccups softly between ragged breaths; his half-open sockets are blank and streaming. As you watch, a tear runs down the groove beneath his left one and slips into the crooked gap between his teeth.

You’ve _never_ seen him this wrecked.

He shakes without clacking, does his overstimulated little cough once or twice almost like it tickles. That’s not an orgasm, but it seems like it feels pretty good anyhow. He makes more of a mess this way, his magic soaking the blanket under him, and now you know exactly what he means by ‘sheds out’ as opposed to ‘goes back’. Either way it’s impressive, and you smile even though your limbs shake with fatigue.

His arms tighten a little, and you do your best to avoid collapsing onto him too hard; you manage, barely, letting your trembling arms slide all the way up into the blessed coolness underneath the pillow. He keeps both arms and replaces his leg wrapped around you, seeming unbothered by your weight despite his wordless panting. His fingers trace words of love and astonishment between your shoulderblades; you don’t know if he knows he’s doing it. You lie there breathing the fragrance of bones and sweat, what might be his spent magic, and your own pleasure, too. The insides of your thighs are a sloppy mess.

“That was almost _too_ much fun,” you manage after a few minutes. He hasn’t stopped squeezing and caressing you, rubbing his face on you and making little grunting sounds every once in a while. “Are you okay?”

“mm-mm… ’m _all_ fucked up... _”_ he slurs throatily, “n th’ _bes’_ way poss’ble.” A broken noise that might be a laugh. “ _...phew._ ”

You wiggle weakly, so he hugs you tight and rolls a little, providing ballast to help you turn over on your side in case his bones are digging in too much. You snuggle up and try to squeeze him with your noodly limbs, loving how loose and lithe his bones are. He exhales shakily against your skin, distal phalanges tracing meaningless little shapes between your shoulderblades now. After a minute he makes a sound of alarm, then leans back to look at you.

“oh, shit. you wanna go again?” he asks with a sheepish grin. “didn’t mean ta leave you hanging.”

“No, I’m good,” you sigh, then wiggle more. “Although I also think we need to designate a dedicated fuck towel at some point. We made a mess.”

He snorts, then scrabbles around for his discarded shirt.

“fucktowel’s my middle name,” he mumbles. You giggle as he mops up the inside of his pelvis lackadaisically, dabs between your legs too with a lascivious grin. You snatch the shirt and toss it vaguely ‘away’ somewhere, then scoop up the shivery little pile of bones you’ve just loved within an inch of his life and pull him close with your newly rediscovered motor skills.

He hums and rubs his skull into you, then quivers loosely with a groan as you run a finger down the side of his spine, right where it connects with his ribs in the back. It’s like there’s that extra space between his bones all over again; it doesn’t even clack. “fuck,” he whispers. “s’like i still feel you in there.”

“Have I told you lately how much I love it when you get all floppy?”

“mm. don’t think you ever told me?”

“Ohhhh… I have been _remiss_ ,” you whisper fervently, feeling him try and fail to shiver again as your hot breath tickles his auditory meatus. “One of the joys I live for is fucking you until your bones don’t touch. Feels like I could crawl right up inside and wear you like the world’s shittiest suit of armor.”

He leans his skull back and stares at you, so iridescent you actually watch the magic bead up on his frontal bone.

Oh god. You really don’t think about the words coming out of your mouth sometimes, do you?

You open your mouth to apologize, then realize both his hands have come up to cradle your face, thumbs stroking the skin under your eyes affectionately.

“that is the most _vulgar shit_ anyone’s ever said to me in my _life_ ,” he whispers, his aspect soft, impressed, and a little sweaty. Like you’re the sun and he’s ready for fun.

“Sorry,” you say anyhow, blushing. “I just-”

“can i use that in my next show?” he whispers, every feature of his skull arranged into longing both genuine and affected.

“No!” you guffaw in mock outrage that cools your face pretty quickly. He always knows just what to say. “You don’t even credit me!”

“you told me not to,” he points out reasonably enough. “everyone jus’ thinks i got funnier all of a sudden.”

“You didn’t, though,” you sigh.

“nope,” he sighs back, that expression still flooding his face. “jus’ got a lot happier all of a sudden. keep on getting happier every second i spend with you.”

“You fucker,” you whisper as your eyes fill, then overflow.

“gotcha good with that one, huh?” he whispers, smug and touched. “gotta get revenge for that ‘eyes like stars’ shit you laid on me.” His thumbs keep caressing, rubbing your tears all over the place. “you had me on my back with my legs in the air _forever_ with that line, darlin’,” he sighs.

“Are stars vulgar too?” you sniffle resentfully.

He just shakes his skull at you gently.

You let your shoulders have one big heave, then you sigh-shiver it out.

“It’s romantic, isn’t it?”

He nods, and his sockets grow pained. “you cracked me open like an egg,” he sighs plaintively, “right from the start.” His fingers slide behind your ears as his expression melts, trace down the back of your neck to give you shivers and then he’s hugging you tight with a helpless little groan.

“and now here you are giving me the best fuck of my _life_ touchin’ me inside…first time it didn’t hurt. not even a _little_ ,” he whispers into your skin, rubbing and nuzzling his face into you, hot and tingly.

He moans when you pet the back of his skull with your palm. “It really hurt you all the time before?”

“mmhmm,” he confirms lightly. “even hurt when grillby did it.” You’re glad his face is in your neck and not looking at you; your eyebrows hit your hairline. Well. You suppose there are drawbacks to being literally made of fire. “mm. m’surprised he was okay with it, but i was already in a lotta pain.” Ohhh. From the pushing incident. “wasn’t the same one, but...” He means his genitalia, you think. “you told me how this one was like yours…then you made me feel jus’ like you, too.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” you say cautiously, rubbing his skull again until he shivers. He leans back to look at you, concern blending out into a soft smile.

“jus’ means…mm. so, the more you do it, more you can share together. less like, uh.” a crease appears between his sockets, then he takes your fingers and puts them at his sternum.

“this feels more like-” he touches your chest lightly, “-this at the same time, the more practice you get.” He grins, uses your fingers to tap himself again. “sharing it back and forth, easy as pie. you gave me a bunch a different ways something like that could make me feel,” he gestures at his pelvis, “so if i wanted to, i knew how to feel it. made it so i could feel like _you_.”

“Oh,” you say softly, then clear your throat. Apparently this was an educational experience for him. “Oh.”

His face melts at the second “oh”, and it makes you blush self-consciously. He rolls up on top of you to squeeze you even tighter, squish you with his hard, heavy body while he gives you white-hot little whispers about how you make him love to come for you, how good you feel right now, how much he loves the way you touch him body-and-soul. He gets quieter, then leans up to look at you long and soft, stroking your face with bone fingers.

He inhales shakily and parts his teeth, leans in to take your lower lip gently between them and holds it there; you hear a tiny, tender crack in his voice come from somewhere deep in his skull. Your eyes fill again; he only does this on your lips when he’s feeling at his most vulnerable, and he almost never initiates it. You can tell it’s one of those things that makes him feel something complicated. He pulls back to trace your cupid’s bow with his thumb, stares at your mouth like it’s the eighth wonder of the world, then ducks back in to bite your lips and breathe heavily for a bit. You take his mouth gently and eagerly, slicking lips and tongue over his teeth and into the gap despite your fatigued jaw, savoring how his body on yours is so solid, like his bones are filled with something. You suppose they are as he pushes the air out of you with weighty hugs and nuzzles, kneels up on knees and elbows to make sure you can get some actual oxygen once in a while.

Your hands roam all over his back like they’re counting and cataloguing all of his bones and the distance between. He sighs tight with satisfaction while you do it, alternating squishing you and squeezing, kneeling and nuzzling, moving around in blissful gratification and trying to hold you from every angle at once.

He hums as you finger his sacrum, penetrating the foramen easily and even pushing your finger boldly at the newly loosened magic in his sacral hiatus. He nudges your jawline gently with his forehead and arches his back and sticks his ass up with a vocal sigh; his body tries vainly to clack against itself as he flexes his tailbone _out_ with a hungry little grunt. You’ve never seen him do _that_ before.

“ _nnh_ … you loosen me up so much, makes me wish i had an asshole too just so you could hand-fuck me in there at the same time,” he groans poignantly into your neck, and he feels it when you freeze.

He leans up, and pure joy replaces concern on his face while he watches you turn purple.

“oh shit,” he whispers, making you blush even harder. “i _did_ it, didn’t i?” He keeps on staring at you. “you’re _sweating_ ,” he whispers gleefully.

“come on,” he adds. “admit it.”

“That’s the most vulgar shit anyone’s ever said to me in my life,” you whisper, staring at the ceiling.

You see his hand appear in your peripheral vision, and you do your best to ignore it, face flaming.

“come onnnnn,” he breathes encouragingly. “put ‘er there.”

You bring your own hand up, and touch your palm to his metacarpals in the meekest high five you’ve ever experienced.

“that’s more like it.” His relaxed giggle rumbles through you softly, then he gets suddenly thoughtful.

“actually…come to think of it, i can’t promise i _don’t_ have an asshole,” he informs you with an uncharacteristically irked frown. “seems like i got jus’ bout everything _else_ ,” he complains, only managing to look slightly put upon by the cruelty of a universe that would bless him with a vestigial anus, and you...oh god. You can help it; you bury your face in his collarbone, hug him tight and laugh til you cry.

“Oh, Sans,” you moan, wiping tears on him shamelessly. “As a wise skeleton once told me...everyone’s different.”

He snorts, then startles you by making a loud kissing noise that originates somewhere in his skull. “love you,” he adds softly.

“Love you too,” you counter, then pull him even closer and squeeze him like a bone bagpipes until he makes the noise.

***

I hope you enjoyed this installment of Advanced Monsterfucking Techniques for Thoughtful Adults Part 15: Exorcising a Cursed Skeleton Pussy.

In other news I have made some drawings of a mildly salacious nature here: https://www.deviantart.com/gildedpleasure/gallery/69308940/drawings-of-a-mildly-salacious-nature

Nothing porn-y; there might be a total of like one(1) nudity.

 


	61. special relativity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of Monsters and Men – Little Talks  
> https://youtu.be/ghb6eDopW8I

“Do you know how Grillby cooks these?” your sister asks quietly, darting her eyes at the flaming bartender. “Is it like, some kind of special command over fire because he’s...um… or does he just stick it in his-”

You’re already snorting, and she frowns at you peevishly.

“This one I actually don’t know,” you explain, still shaking with mirth.

You’d woken up this morning with your face crammed uncomfortably between Sans’s spine and shoulder, and the dents left on your face had taken an hour to look less like special effects scar makeup and more like you slept on a pile of magic bones. Although you’d both apparently slept right through the evening and night, Sans didn’t seem inclined to rise and shine anytime soon so you’d gone downstairs to shoot the shit with Ange for a while over some coffee. Papyrus had arrived to take the kids to work with him according to some previously made promise, since it was a day off for both the kids from school and Ange from work. You and she had decided to go out to Grillby’s for some breakfast burg instead of bothering to make anything.

“So...what happened?”

“Hmm?” you ask, finishing up your own burger in a few short bites.

“I mean...why are you here and Sans in bed instead of at wherever he works? I thought you were going to be gone a week.”

You rest your chin on your hand and watch the people at the bar do their thing; the low-key hubbub’s oddly soothing.

“Frisk snuck a strange human into a secure area and won’t say why. When Sans tried to find out if Alphys knew about it, she wouldn’t say and they had a fight. He’s used to being pissed off at Frisk, but I’m not sure he knows how to deal with being mad at Alphys,” you explain perfunctorily. “So we bailed and decided to take a day off.”

Ange looks mildly horrified, but is trying to play it off. “Shouldn’t he...be dealing with that?”

“He is,” you explain mildly. “Um, he doesn’t sleep how we do. He’s thinking. When he’s done thinking, he’ll decide what to do.” You frown. “Although honestly? He probably won’t actually do anything.”

She doesn’t seem to really know what to do with that. “Are you mad at Frisk and Alphys too?”

“I’m mad at everyone,” you gripe sincerely, “but not because of monster espionage. I’m pissed that they won’t just fucking _talk_ to each other. I thought we got through all the keeping secrets and acting out, but apparently this has even more layers going on. And I’m tired of it,” you finish with a peevish exhale. You’re also tired of the constant gnawing existential dread knowing what Frisk can do causes, but at this point it’s just kind of background radiation that doesn’t negate your commitment to living your life to the best of your ability. “I’m less mad at Sans because I’m pretty sure he actually is trying.”

“Well. Isn’t that what you’re always complaining about with monsters? The, um. Cultural context thing?”

You shake your head in frustration, but it’s not at her. “No, no. That just makes it easier for them to do it. Sans’s family’s fucked up.”

“All families are fucked up,” Ange says, unusually cynical even for her.

“You know that’s not true,” you say, quiet but adamant. “And saying that stuff just normalizes the fucked up ones, makes it seem like you don’t have to try and get better.”

She looks down at the table, but doesn’t say anything. She’s accepting your criticism, and you feel the silly, incongruous rush of guilt you always do, even though you meant what you said and you wouldn’t take it back.

“The whole high context culture thing is actually really, um. Different.” You seek comfort in transforming into Captain Explainypants, which puts you both back on familiar ground interaction-wise. She looks back up at you curiously, making your smile return; her genuine interest is always a nice surprise.

“You spend a lot of time around monster kids, but not as much monster adults, right?” She nods hesitantly. “Kids have different rules for interacting than adults do by a fair margin. So, there are a lot of things you can say behind people’s backs but not to their face, and that’s actually polite. Of course there are still things that count as gossip, but...a lot of things are only rude if you say them to the person they’re about.”

She looks baffled. “Like what? That’s hard for me to imagine.”

“Okay. So here’s an example of something it’s fine for me to tell, you, and for me and you to talk about. But you can't say anything to Sans...or...see that Dog over there in the pink shirt?”

“The one with the bandanna thing?” she whispers, even though she doesn’t actually need to.

You nod with a grin. “That’s Sans’s _ex_ ,” you whisper dramatically. “They had a bad breakup about a bazillion years ago, but they seem okay with each other now.”

She leans in incredulously. “Sans was boyfriends with a dog?” she hisses.

“A _Dog_ ,” you frown back at her. “He’d never call it that, and it wasn’t really that serious... for Sans, at least. But for um. Functional purposes of this conversation? Pretty much. Almost all the Dogs lived in Snowdin back underground, and Sans and Doggo worked as sentries in the woods together.”

“They were coworkers?” Ange looks at Doggo thoughtfully. “Scandalous, huh?”

“Nope,” you answer. “There’s no, um. It’s not a problem for monsters, since for them ‘jobs’ don’t work like they do here.”

“Oh,” she says, then looks down at the table, fiddles with her drink and then picks it up to take a sip. “Why did they break up?”

You feel your lips quirk wryly. “I’ll tell you, but seriously? Don’t say anything to him. It’s a sore spot, okay?”

“Sure, okay,” she agrees easily enough.

You try and think where to start. “This might actually need a bit of background. So...okay. The way Sans dresses is considered provocative, and so is the way he acts.”

“Like...provokes fights?” she asks, utterly baffled. “He seems really relaxed to me...kind of to a fault sometimes.”

She’s visibly thinking about the time he’d let Nattie cut his all of his clothes into new and fascinating shapes to ‘design a fashion’. While he was wearing them. You bark a short laugh, shake your head. “Sexually provocative. Um. Slutty.”

She stares at you in abject disbelief.

“That’s pretty much how I reacted on the inside too, but it’s true,” you continue with a shrug. “It might actually be more of a Snowdin thing than a general monster thing, but I’ve heard Papyrus get _really_ snippy with people for saying things about his brother’s...um. The word they use for it is ‘forward’, and it means something like slutty and a little like creepy, without being as bad as either. Maybe closer to “comes on strong”?

“That’s so complicated,” Ange says wonderingly.

“Sorry. I’ve got seminar on the brain, I guess.”

“No, I understood everything fine,” she explains. “I meant their culture is really complicated.”

You can’t argue with that.

“So, basically Sans and Doggo fooled around on and off for a while, but Doggo used to come here and tell people about it. Well. The Grillby’s back underground, and in detail from what I’ve gathered from context. Sans got mad about it and told him to stop, and he agreed but kept doing it anyways...and um. Sans ended up with a reputation,” you whisper. She goggles, and you shake your head. “Monster gender doesn’t work that way, remember?”

She looks dubious, but lets it go. “So it’s the combination of what Doggo said and the way Sans acts that made people gossip?”

“Well, _I_ think so,” you ameliorate. “I asked around, but I can’t really find out more without making everyone miserable. And Sans got back at him by ruining _his_ reputation Cassandra-style.” Oh, yeah. Ange doesn’t know what that is. “People don’t believe what Doggo says anymore, because his eyesight’s not good, and he, um. Sans set him up with a bunch of pranks, and turned him into...” Ahh. A better example presents itself. “The boy who cried wolf.” Ange grins bigger than expected.

Oh. Doggo. Cried wolf.

You sigh at yourself; no wonder Sans likes you. But still you continue...doggedly. “And just so you know, he’s likely to take offense at things that would imply he’s slept around a lot, same way if you had a reputation like that. Defensive about it. Like...anything you say to him about being ‘good with his hands’ or something related…has the same implications for him it would with a human,” you inform her.

“Wow,” she says a little awkwardly.

“Although I have to admit that he is,” you add in a whisper, then snort loudly despite yourself. She glances over at you surreptitiously, then laughs at your outrageous wink.

“Monsters have their own words for sex things, too,” you inform her with all the simpering superiority of a kid barely in their teens. “Slang and all that.” She’s intrigued despite your pageantry, so you spend a little while explaining how words like “feel” or “tug” are double entendres for monsters too, but they describe or imply different acts. It’s also funny explaining how saying something like “i know him” can be completely innocuous or absolutely scandalous depending on how you say it, and to who.

“Wow,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Sounds like when we say something like, I don’t know. ‘Put it in,’ and then someone decides to start snickering.”

“I think that’s almost exactly...” You trail off as she sits up, looks to the side and straightens. Oh. Apparently Grillby’s coming over. And he’s bringing a small glass and a fat, short tumbler with him.

“Am I having too good a time over here? Trying to calm me down and keep your place respectable?” You grin up at him once he gets close enough. He directs a slowly lambent glance at the other side of the table without saying anything, then sets the glasses in front of you.

Ohhhh. They’re a bribe for the Sans Report. He’s worried for the same reason your sister was; on top of that, Sans isn’t here but you are. And if that’s the case, he’s probably asleep somewhere, which is what he does when he’s having a bad time. Not worst-bad; if that was the case he’d be with Lola. Possibly medium-bad.

“It’s nothing he can’t sleep off,” you reply, and he relaxes a little. For him that means turning a slightly lighter shade of orange. “And he is,” you clarify with a grin. Angie’s watching Grillby curiously like she always does. She probably wonders how you can understand what he says, although you don’t bother explaining he wasn’t actually talking just then.

You look down at the glasses in front of you curiously. You don’t recognize either, and you look back up at him. He’s just sort of lingering, although you’re not sure if he’s unsatisfied with your responses or just bored. It’s not especially busy or anything.

“Care to join us?”

He grins, then somehow...darts a tendril of himself across the floor and drags a chair from a nearby table towards him from behind until it’s under what passes for his butt. He sits primly, crossing his legs at the knee and leaning forward to dramatically adjust his unnecessary prop glasses, then rests his elbows on the booth table and his chin on his fists like the utterly committed camp gay he is. You can’t help it; you cover your eyes and guffaw.

“That’s an awesome trick, Grillby.” It’s a strangled chuckle, and you have to wipe a tear before peering back over at him. He looks smug as hell and not offended at all, because he’s fuckin’ _Grillby_. Good lord. You actually get it, you really do.

… _Are you going to drink those?_ he asks politely, tilting his flaming head at you like a curious wren as he dabbles two fiery fingers under his chin in the general direction of the mysterious beverages he’s brought you.

“It’s a little early for me, I think,” you giggle thickly, hugging yourself with the drama of it all. He gives you a bright, pleased smile and promptly sticks the first glass in his face, followed by the second one which he puts back with a little more oomph than strictly necessary.

… _Will you ask your sister if I can speak frankly with her?_

You look over at Ange, who’s waiting with bated breath.

“Grillby wants to know if he can use his soul to make you understand what he says,” you explain with a little smile. “Monsters who spend time around humans won’t usually do that unless they get permission first because of-” Grillby’s already purple around the edges, “-cultural things,” you say mercifully. “For monsters permission’s implicit for certain kinds of interactions, but for others it’s rude not to leave them the option of not understanding. That’s a little more limiting for Grillby than it is for most monsters, because he can’t actually make...um...voice? Sounds?”

… _I make voice sounds,_ he protests. _…It’s not my fault no one can understand them without help._

It still seems unfair to you the way he gets judged for being taciturn, despite the fact that he’s behaving according to the rules of politeness. Monsters might be very permissive by the standards you’re used to, but they have their own hangups and bullshit too. Just like any people, you suppose.

“Um,” Angie says, looking at him like he’s about to kiss her. “You have my...permission?”

… _Thank you_ , Grillby says brightly. … _How is_ _your_ _meal?_

Angie just stares and blinks for enough time to make it a little awkward, then it’s like her brain gets rebooted.

“Uh. Good! It’s really good, like always.”

… _And how are the children?_

“Um? Good?”

“They’re with Papyrus at work today,” you add casually, giving Ange a look. “Are you okay, sis?”

“I just, uh. Thought soul speak would be more...um. Profound?”

You try and suppress another giggle, but you can’t quite manage it. “Ange, I’m pretty sure I just went over how Grillby can’t talk so you can understand unless he does that. He just wants to shoot the shit with us.”

… _Don’t go giving away my hidden_ _talent_ _for bullshittery_ , Grillby adds wryly. _… Someone might mistake me for a bartender._

Even Ange laughs at that one. Good. After a few more of Grillby’s one-liners, she seems downright comfortable.

“Can I ask you a question?”

… _Shoot_ , he says with his best Sans-finger-guns impression.

I hear you have a bathroom here. Do you think you could, um. Point it out?

 _...Oh!_ Grillby looks as delighted as he always does when someone asks to use the facilities. He turns his whole upper body to point ostentatiously at the unmarked door near Lola’s booth. _…It’s right over there. There’s even the paper humans like to use,_ _and it’s_ _ **right by**_ _the toilet, so you don’t even have to get up_ _! I’ve had nothing but rave reviews, in fact!_

“Uh.” Angie’s smile goes a little wonky, but she manages to stabilize it as she stands up a little self-consciously. After all, a few regulars and not-so-regulars including Doggo are looking over at her now too, excited that a human patron is going to go use the bathroom. It’s like it never gets old for them. Good lord.

“Thanks,” she manages, and totters over to the door. She shoots you a look as she opens the door, but heads inside willingly enough.

You giggle, and Grillby does his little sigh-flicker thing as he leans back in again. He seems really chill today for whatever reason. You hope he’s enjoying whatever it was he drank; nothing poured ever gets wasted if he can help it.

“Can I ask one of my weird questions, Grillby?”

He gets that look like always when you ask: somewhere between flattered, smug, and braced for abject humiliation. That seems reasonable enough for the situation, since neither of you ever know if it’s going to be something inconsequential or the equivalent of asking your mother-in-law what color her nipples are.

Ironically enough for a person who never leaves his home, Grillby is pretty much guaranteed to be at least a little flattered by any interaction that implies he’s worldly and wise; it makes you understand why Sans thinks he’s so cute. It also makes him an invaluable inside source on random monster customs, like some kind of secret informant. Not because he knows more necessarily, but the fact that he’s willing to talk about with you like this. You chalk it up to him being more accustomed to the idea of cultural differences, since due to his unfortunate circumstances he’s got them with literally every other monster he knows. Humanity’s just a matter of degree, after all.

“So, the other day Nattie was asking Sans if he likes to be picked up. And Sans made one of his little jokes and avoided the question, so Nattie asked Frisk later on if they ever picked Sans up. The idea really bothered me, and I don’t know why.”

… _That’s an anecdote, not a question._

“I’m trying to figure out why it bothers me so much,” you inform him. “Do you ever pick Sans up?”

… _Yes_ , he answers with a prim little flicker, then another change of hue that implies something else.

“Oh god,” you say quietly, thinking of response you got the last time _you_ picked Sans up and blushing slightly. “Is it a sex thing?”

 _...No, of course not,_ he answers quickly. _… Although… it’s a little odd to some people that he lets his brother carry him, but not much more than...hmmm… Perhaps how some humans kiss their relatives on the face or mouth, and for others, that’s reserved only for romantic partners? It is merely...affectionate, but not inappropriate._

You frown. “Then why does the idea of Frisk picking him up bother me?”

… _I don’t know_ , Grillby says, looking awfully bemused. _…Although I_ _c_ _ould point out that you’re not actually immune to having_ _strange_ _feelings_ _no one else understands for your own reasons._

“That’s a good point,” you admit, blushing a little as he giggles at you. “Well. Monsters have an incest taboo as well, right?”

You see a wave of grey go through Grillby’s face, and you feel kind of bad.

… _Of_ _ **course**_ _we do_ , he says, sounding disgusted to match the color change. _…We’re not animals._

“Sorry,” you say, shrugging. “I mean, I picked up on that, but sometimes I just...um.” You trail off, then grin big and toothy. “I am stupid,” you announce brightly, making him crackle-snort at your usual catchphrase you use to smooth over blunders during these little talks. “I’m aware there’s a taboo between you and Lola,” you add hesitantly, but he seems fine with that.

… _Yes. It has to do with what she and I are to each other, and her dependence on me. It is too much like a…_

He seems thoughtful for a second.

… _Perhaps like a caretaker and adult dependent, or… a doctor and a patient, but stronger than it is for humans, while being less...unequal? And at the same time more absolute, since the relationship makes us relatives._

“You’re good at explaining it, Grillby,” you smile, resting your chin in your hands.

… _It’s good that you ask me these things_ , Grillby says warmly enough to make you blush. Then he peers at you more closely. _…You don’t realize_ , he adds wonderingly. _…You are_ _ **supposed**_ _to ask these things,_ _especially_ _about Sans. Your questions are very… strange… sometimes, but by asking me, you acknowledge me as his relative, and you spare him the loneliness of having to explain himself to you._ Another lambent glance across the booth, where your sister should be returning shortly.

… _Drinks and_ _good_ _company make these things much easier, don’t they? I'm glad you understand that you are welcome here.  
_

You have a sudden realization that Grillby’s telling you several things by talking around them.

Grillby isn't spared the loneliness of explaining himself. Explaining Sans (and by necessity, monsters in general) to you makes him feel less lonely, as does the fact that you brought another relative with you in Sans’s absence.

By bringing your sister here, you demonstrate a willingness to expand and support Sans’s fulfillment of his relationship with Grillby.

And by accepting his drinks and asking him to join the table, you’re acknowledging the interest he’s expressing in _you_.

In a similar capacity to Sans.

That's, um. Interesting.

Ange mercifully exits the bathroom at the moment to be toasted cheerfully by Doggo and Craig at the end of the bar nearest the bathroom, so you raise your glass at her with a grin as well to cover your momentary discomfiture.

“Um. I was just asking Grillby some more culture questions. I thought I was being like an anthropologist or something,” you say a little breathlessly, staring at nothing in particular.

Grillby does his equivalent of throwing his head back with laughter; a few other monsters glance over to try and see what’s so funny since Grillby doesn’t do that sort of thing very often. If he was human, he’d be wiping tears away, and your blush deepens.

… _I am laughing because a human calling himself that came here once. He asked everyone questions that made them avoid him. He asked for drinks as well, which I foolishly allowed. He then asked to use my bedroom with Aaron, who liked his awful questions for reasons known only to Aaron._

“Oh...geez. What happened?”

… _I have told you what happened_ , Grillby says, looking confused.

“I mean, um. Did he just never come back? Was he embarrassed?”

… _No? He doesn’t have anything to be embarrassed about due to the nature of this establishment, and he still comes here sometimes. He stays with Aaron now, and doesn’t call himself Anthropologist anymore, just Tony._

You blink rapidly at that. “All of...” you cut yourself off, trying to think of a better way to say it, “...him?” There’s like 30 of Aaron, and they all live in an apartment building in downtown. Not too far from here, actually. Grillby gives you a remonstrative look anyhow, but instead of blushing you realize something.

“Wait, I _know_ a Tony from here.” He’s a human; you don’t think he’s a regular but he always seems really comfortable, and you remember him because he actually laughs at almost half of Sans’s jokes on a regular basis. “That’s...him?”

 _...Yes?_ Grillby says mildly. You think you also know where a lot of your materials for the seminar you’re working on came from too, now. Oops.

“Is this a cruising spot for humans who are interested in monsters?” you whisper scandalously, and Grillby laughs again.

… _Of course it is, and if they like Aaron, they are in luck. He is very forward. It’s a cruising spot for monsters who are interested in monsters as well, as I am sure you have noticed_ , he finishes a little more superciliously than you think is warranted.

“I’m sure Craig noticed too,” you lob back, and Grillby actually turns purple at the edges again over that. You just grin. Apparently he and Craig get up to the kinky stuff.

Then you look over at Ange, who’s watching you go back and forth with an expression on her face you don’t think you’ve ever seen before.

“What?” you ask hesitantly.

She shrugs, eyes darting to the side for a second. “Nothing. You just seem to have a...um. Nothing.”

“Oh god.” You rub your face with your hand, then turn to look at Grillby. He seems confused. “Angie’s not used to seeing me having friends,” you explain wryly.

“I didn’t mean it like that!” she protests in a way that confirms that was exactly what she was thinking.

… _Really?_ Grillby says. _…You did not have many friends before? I find that difficult to believe._

You give him a mock-pathetic look. “I’m kind of like the Papyrus of humans,” you try.

… _Everyone likes Papyrus_ , he says a bit stiffly.

“It doesn’t do _him_ much good though, does it? Most monsters still avoid him.”

Aww. Now you just made Grillby all sad. He and Papyrus seem quite close in their own way, looking out for each other surreptitiously although their interactions seem mostly based on creatively backhanded insults and/or compliments. Papyrus is definitely the only person you’ve ever seen Grillby let use his kitchen. Not even Sans is allowed to touch his cooking stuff, and he lets regulars use his _bedroom_.

“Sorry I made you all sad,” you say, and if he wasn’t made of fire you might have patted his shoulder. You’re already quite toasty having him sitting at the same table. “Wanna ask Craig to dry your tears?” He’s sitting up at the bar chatting up Doggo at the moment, although Doggo doesn’t seem all that interested.

… _If you’re going to be like that, I have better things to do with my time_ , Grillby says extra bitchily as he stands, making you grin.

Cheering up attempt: success.

Ange stares at Grillby’s back as he disappears through the fire door.

“He’s really just as eccentric as the brothers in his own way, isn’t he?”

You shrug. “All monsters are. I mean...they’re exactly as weird as they seem, which I personally find kind of reassuring.”

Ange looks to the side again, then back at you as she leans in a little. “Sans is lucky to have such a good friend that lets him eat here for free, do whatever he wants in his place. I can’t believe he puts up with his antics half the time; Grillby doesn’t seem like the most indulgent person for that brand of nonsense. Did Sans do him a favor at some point?”

You look a silent question at her; you don’t know what she’s getting at.

“That tab of his he never pays,” she says, seeming sincerely nonplussed. “Those awful _shows_...the...” She trails off as you cover your face with both hands, shoulders shaking with mirth you suddenly can’t contain.

“What?” she hisses. “What’s so funny about that?

You wipe your eyes, and look over at you sister from between your hands with a wheeze.

“Oh, man. Angie. You know monster relationships don’t work like human ones, right?”

She shrugs and her shoulders relax. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. They take friendships a lot more-”

“Sans is Grillby’s husband,” you blurt, surprising both of you. “That’s not actually accurate and they’d never, _ever_ call it that, but it’s the closest word we have for it,” you continue as her buttfaced expression slips into dumbfounded, realizing you’re not just fucking with her.

“Yeah, that’s kind of how I felt, too,” you say, a little self-consciously. “But...” Oh, hypocrisy. Your achilles heel. “Everyone knew except me until a few months ago. It’s not a secret, it’s just so obvious no one ever needs to talk about it. _That’s_ how monsters are. That’s what I’ve been dealing with, and been trying to sort of...find ways to explain in my little seminars. I mean, without dying of embarrassment.” You grimace at the tabletop. “It’s hard to do without spilling a lot more of my own guts than I’m willing to in front of a bunch of people half my age, but the monster/human interviews help with other examples, at least.”

“But spends all his time with _you_ ,” she protests. “And he...” she blinks and looks around. “Huh. I guess he does just spend a week here every once in a while, doesn’t he.”

You nod. “Grillby’s is his other household, and this is his other family,” you explain, having flashbacks to the time you’d sat with Sans here and said some rather similar things. You blush a little realizing you’d automatically taken Sans’s table here, table number seven. “Like your place and Sans’s place for me.” She looks like on some level she gets that. Huh. Good. “Their relationship isn’t anything like ours, though. So maybe husband’s a bad choice of word? I’d say it’s a committed friendship, but it’s still more than that. They’re obligated to each other in certain ways.” You sigh, thinking about how to explain something you have a hard time understanding yourself. “They’re invested in each others’ wellbeing; Sans is obligated to bring Grillby new, um…visitors, food, little, um. Gifts? Grillby gives Sans drinks, and he can take them outside the bar to have when he needs it. And then on top of that they’re also…close.” You check to see if she knows what you mean, then sigh. For all the explanations, Ange doesn’t get the connotation there.

“I feel kind of bad for monsters sometimes,” you say instead of immediately making it more explicit. “For them it must be like...I don’t know. A benevolent alien invasion, and they keep asking you who your spork is. Over time you realize that to them, your mother, your child, your dentist, and every person that exists that you’ve never met before are all ‘spork’, and for the life of you you can’t see what they could have in common.”

Ange gives you an incredulous look. “What do they have in common?”

You open your mouth to say obviously nothing, then a funny thought occurs to you. Brains are weird, and even though you thought those were chosen at random, there is something.

“They’re all people whose expectations you want to live up to. You want to make them proud,” you say musingly. There’s really not much that can top your dentist being able to tell you floss regularly, or imagining the vague concept of a stranger marveling at your accomplishments.

“Lola’s his relative too, although it’s...complicated. But they’re my relatives through Sans, and now..they're yours, through me. I don’t think we have names for that either, and um. They don’t actually need names for it…although there’s that sexual taboo between Grillby and Lola, it doesn’t apply to Sans for either of them. But Grillby’s the only one he does that with as a regular thing.”

She’s giving you a weird look, and you decide to head that off at the pass.

“They don’t have sex very often,” you explain quickly, “and they had just decided to forego it for the duration of my relationship with Sans, but after the whole, um. Remembering what happened when he was a kid?” Ahh, good. She knows what you mean. “He wanted to, and I told him he should.”

“It’s like a...polyamory thing?”

“Not really,” you sigh. “It’d be better if it had been, or um. Was. But Sans just had _absolutely no clue_ a human might object to something like what he does with Grillby until we’d already been together for months, as far as he was concerned. And he had no idea I didn’t know about it. By his standards he’d told me every little detail as soon as either of us expressed interest in each other, even though whatever he does with Grillby was none of my business by his cultural standards. I just got confused by something he said and thought Grillby was his ex. Because their relationship is...exactly what you see. And the soul sex...doesn’t actually make a difference to their relationship. That’s how all monsters are, actually. Doing that with someone doesn’t make them anything; it doesn’t _change_ anything with anyone. You are whatever you’d be otherwise, and anyone can do that _with_ anyone, it doesn’t… are you okay?”

Ange looks shaken; she mutters something you can’t understand because she has both hands sort of steepled over her mouth.

“What happened?”

Her eyes meet yours surreptitiously, and she pulls her hands down. Her arms wind around herself, and she glances to the side.

“Ange,” you start, your own voice sound kind of high and weird to your own ears. “Are you boffing a monster?”

Angie’s dark complexion doesn’t show blushes very well, but her nose and ears are literally neon pink under the melanin. Oh my god.

She _is_ boffing a monster.

“Is it someone I know?” Your words are a strangled whisper now. “Oh shit, it _is_.” You think for a second. She’d definitely only be interested in someone she’s already gotten to know well, someone established and reliable, someone good with kids and that gets along with hers, that-

“For the _love of god_ , darling sister, _p_ _lease_ tell me you’re not banging Papyrus,” you choke out quietly, using the nickname you save for the most trying moments between you two; you’re flooded with relief at her indignant squawk.

“Of course not!” she cries, and a few monsters turn to look. She ducks her head, but her blush is actually cooling, weirdly enough. “Isn’t he gay?” she whispers. “And...with Mettaton?”

“By human standards, they’re all gay,” you point out with a shrug. “And I’m pretty sure I just explained that that doesn’t actually...preclude anything,” you blush and glance to the side, willing your own face to cool through sheer will alone, “but um. I don’t think Papyrus actually does that.” You _know_ he doesn’t, and that’s exactly what you’re trying to not think about. Hoo boy. But you’ve already had way too many surprises in this regard to rule it out completely without asking.

“You don’t have to tell me,” you say quietly, having mercy on your poor, beleaguered sibling. “Ever, if you don’t want to. When you do that, according to monsters, it’s not anyone’s business who does or doesn’t even though they all pretty much know. But if you have any questions for me about-”

“It’s Toriel,” she says tersely, and you jaw drops.

Yeah.

You were _not_ expecting that.

“What?” she says, arms crossed over tight and tense.

“I’m really surprised,” you say earnestly, and her face softens as she darts sidelong glances at you some more. “I… shouldn’t be, though. Should I.”

She relaxes a little, stares at the table. You don’t ask her if it’s good, you already know the answer to that. You don’t ask her if she’s happy, because you’ve noticed for a while that she has been, and just assumed that it was loving her new job, knowing she doesn’t have to worry about all the things she’s used to worrying about, and generally living that awesome Ebott lifestyle. Your lips twitch; well, this would definitely fall under that category. You take a deep breath and let it out slow.

“If you want to actually be with her other than friends, you have to be super direct even though it’ll embarrass her. It’s not that what you, um. Do. It’s not that it doesn’t mean a lot to her, it obviously does. It just doesn’t mean the same things it would to a human, so you have to bite the bullet and be honest, even when it makes her uncomfortable.”

Angie stares at the table still, but softens further. You rub your eye absently. Now you have a better idea where Toriel had kept disappearing to during gyftmas; even Sans had commented on it. She’d probably been preparing some kind of surprise for Angie, not Sans. And it would have been the simplest thing in the world to sneak off to one of the many rooms in Toriel’s house, even for as long as monster intimacy usually takes. It’s not like she has to worry about someone to keep an eye on the kids there.

Yeesh. You remember some of what Toriel had said to you after you asked her if she was tired of being a mom all the time...and that ironic, saucy wink after she’d admitted to being ‘a lover’ to some of the other people in her life. Coming from a monster like her, that’s more or less the equivalent of ‘strong words for someone who’s sister I’m boning.’ She and Sans really are surprisingly alike in some ways.

You blink rapidly. Actually...if what Sans had showed you on your birthday was anything to go on...he would have _known_ they were doing that, wouldn’t he. All the monsters there would have been aware to some degree, but you and Frisk...were wondering where Toriel kept going, and Sans had given you both a plausible reason to make Frisk lose interest in going to find her.

That fucker. He’d been _covering_ for them.

“Sans approves,” you grin across the table, and Angie gives you a look full of consternation. “No one’s telepathic,” you inform her, amused. “He’s just really perceptive, and thinking back on some stuff he did I can tell he knew. Knows.” She still looks either nervous or unnerved, so you decide to change the subject.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” you ask after a minute of consideration.

She turns hot pink again, but nods slowly.

“What’s your trait?”

She glances up at you abruptly, barks a short laugh. “Is that really a _personal_ question?”

“Well, yeah,” you say. “Obviously.”

She just laughs and shakes her head. “Bravery.” You feel your face do something, and she leans in with a frown, immediately concerned.

Because of course she is. She’s also been on medications for her anxiety since she was a teenager, since before your mother had passed. And then there had been the years of night terrors afterwards… and how long it had taken her to make the move here, even though she knew she wanted to… her decision to play a role she felt would reduce the decisions she’d have to make, but instead had been… Fuck. It makes so much sense.

“Is that some kind of big deal?” she whispers. “What’s yours?”

“They’re all a big deal,” you explain slowly. “Um. Integrity.”

“Huh,” she says, considering. “I thought it was just like...I dunno. Zodiac signs or whatever? Like, you have a color, and it’s...” She trails off when you shake your head. Then something else occurs to you.

“Monster children are allowed to be a lot more direct about… everything,” you say thoughtfully. “Souls, interactions, money, relationships, all of that. It’s an important part of being...immature?” you try. “Do you know what the kids are?”

“Well, yeah,” she says, frowning. “Nattie’s the same as me, and Shonda’s purple or whatever.”

Perseverance. Huh. That makes sense, although a part of you had been certain she’d be Integrity, too. You’re a lot alike, after all. You exhale slowly, then give her a bracing smile.

“It’s a big deal, but it’s definitely not any scarier than genetics,” you say wryly, and her eyes flicker to your chest. She hadn’t made the same decision about the double cancer gene you and she both carry, inherited from your mother, but she understood and respected yours from the moment you’d told her. She even came to get why you probably would have done it anyhow, and she also knows why you waited as long as you did. She knows a lot about you, and you’re so glad you have her. “If you want to know more, you should sit in on a Soul Studies meeting,” you say wryly. “It’s practically a real class at this point.”

“Maybe I will,” she says thoughtfully. She sighs, spreads her hands flat on the table. “Well. Um. You about ready to head back?”

“In just a minute,” you say, glancing at the fire door. “I’m waiting on-oh, there we go.”

Grillby appears with a paper bag (inside two other bags for insulation) you know is filled with fries and two bottles of ketchup, flicker-grinning at you as he saunters over. He’s in a good mood, and he’s less prickly about showing it when Sans isn’t here. He always saves up his best bitchiness for his bonefriend; he knows Sans loves it when he’s performing at peak curmudgeon.

You try not to think what Sans’s preferences say about you, and you blow him a kiss as he wordlessly leaves the bag on the table, then shucks the glove that allows him to carry a paper bag without burning it to ash back inside his apron. There’s so much stuff in there, you kind of wonder if Sans did his Thing on it at some point. It would make sense if he had.

“Okay,” you inform your sister, who’s looking at you with something like fond suspicion. “I’m ready to head out now.”

You’re not all that surprised when she just drops you off, gives you a sheepish shrug, and keeps on driving.

Apparently she has another little talk to have elsewhere.

***

You wake Sans up with Grillby’s still-hot care package and watch him eat thoughtfully while pretending to look at things on your viewer. You know you’re not fooling anyone, and Sans knows you’re psyching yourself up to say whatever it is you’re going to say to him. Eventually you just dismiss it with a sigh. He looks at you mildly, tipping the second bottle of ketchup at his teeth and letting it blorp patiently down the hatch.

“decided what you’re gonna tell me yet?”

“Yeah,” you sigh with a tiny smile. “Flowey decided to come visit me in the spaghetti pit.” Sans doesn’t seem happy about that, but he doesn’t seem all that surprised either.

“what’s the flower want?”

“The same thing you do, according to him.”

That makes his expression go flat. “that so.”

You raise your brows at him. “He wants me to stall Frisk. Of course I have literally no idea what they’re up to, therefore no clue what kind of thing might actually make that take longer. So.”

“huh.”

You widen your eyes at him in mock innocence.

“Which would seem like you really are seeing eye to eye on that, huh?”

“guess so,” he replies, not breaking eye contact as he shoves another fry through the gap in his teeth. This is really unsatisfying for both of you, so you change the subject.

“Out of curiosity, what’s that smell?” you ask instead.

“oh, uh.” Sans picks up the bag of fries, gives it a nice big sniff. “mm. grillbz seasoned these for me special.”

“Good lord. What does he season them with?”

“dunno? tastes like uh. fishy sugar? cept it’s kinda sour.”

“Waaaowwwww,” you comment dryly, making the word at least seven syllables long. “Is there a kitchen sink on there too? Maybe some road salt?”

A crease appears between his incredulous sockets. “what kinda fries don’t have _salt_ on em?”

“I have no idea,” you sigh. “What kind?”

“well, i _was_ gonna make a joke about sodium.” His sockets narrow. “but...na.”

You give him a pained look you manage to turn into a smile. You’re pretty sure he has a mug with that one on it. At the lab. On his kitchen desk. “You should put that one in the ‘show’ pile, since it doesn’t work out loud. Are you feeling ready to go back to work yet?”

He exhales, glances to the side.

“wanna fool around in the shower first?” he asks hopefully, giving you his syrupy sadsack socket shape.

You frown and grimace at him. “I’m still all wrung out from yesterday,” you complain with your best approximation of the same expression. He nods in easy acceptance as his face softens with the memory, eats another fry as he starts to say something else. “Let’s do it in the _tub_ , sitting down like civilized people,” you interrupt, leaning forward lasciviously. After all, the kids are out for the day, and so is Angie now.

He grins sharp and wicked as he abandons his fries and reaches for you instead, pleased as pie.

In the end, you don’t actually manage to make it to the tub before he has _you_ butt naked on your back with your legs in the air this time, rubbing his fixed grin between them and purring sweet, resonant nothings into you until you’re wet and panting. Then he shucks his shorts, brings his disgraced face up to yours, and turns your joking complaints to soft moans as he positions himself to rub the tight resistance in his pubic symphysis along your quivering cleft instead. You open your still-weary arms and legs to welcome him, loving his reverent touches, his soft, rambling whispers, even the vaguely appetizing smell of powdery bones and the less-so ghost of yesterday’s fuck plus whatever the hell he just ate.

“you feel _so_ _good_ like this,” he groans as his head bows under the weight of his pleasure, the special-seasoned phalanges of one hand buried greasily in the hair at the back of your head, the other one squeezing the soft fat of your thigh where he has your leg hooked into the crook of his elbow. He’s so circumspect doing this, pleasuring you both with an impressive economy of movement and a great deal of care for your delicate flesh under his hard bones.

Neither of you have to actually _do_ much for it to be incredibly effective, so it’s a perennial favorite. You’re usually the active partner for this, but it’s perfectly awesome to be resting your weary limbs right now. In either case whoever’s topping usually gets extra caresses to make up for doing the work, but your hands and arms are still fatigued from yesterday, and you’ve got a bruise where he fuck-slammed your elbow into the leg you were bracing it on. So instead you just hold him close and enjoy what he’s giving you, tracing a fingertip along a rib or a shoulderblade once in a while to feel his sweet little shivers. You’re both taking your time rather than trying to race each other to a goal, since he doesn’t actually have one… or more like he’s already achieving it.

His pleasure gets bigger and deeper without being directional when his integral magic’s at rest, and the sensations provided by his tense, dense magic are plenty intense enough to get you there. You smile softly to yourself, awash with easy bliss; you’ll have to remember that little play on words to bust out at a later date. Maybe to the tune of an old-timey TV show jingle, with his genitalia as a microphone.

The smooth twin bumps of his pubic tubercles circle insistently to either side of your clit and hold your outer labia apart, while the tight-packed resonance of his sleeping magic hums and thrums madly right on the money. It’s like the way his body’s shaped here was _made_ for this. You shudder and groan when he moves to slide up and down instead, then cry out sharp as a little bit of his magic decides to become not-part of him with the strength of his delight, slipping out of him to slick across the lips of your vulva for a brief moment before it sinks right in, redolent with the indescribable, unmistakable spice of him.

“… _fuck_.” It’s an explosive breath, fervent and adoring. He tips his skull back up to look at you through sockets narrowed with lush, lazy delight, then his features soften with something sincere and vulnerable. “you really like me this way? jus’ bones?”

You pant through parted lips as you nod fervently, feeling the tension in the skin under your eyes as you get oh-so-close to where you want to be. You were already thinking about how his body like this is better and more focused than the best oral sex you’ve ever had, and more simultaneously gentle and stimulating than any toy. But he gives you so much more than just physical sensations; every time he touches you it feels like a layering of every time he’s touched you flooding your senses all over again. Your hands creep up from his back to stroke his face reverently.

“I _love_ doing this with you,” you manage between labored breaths.

These are the same sensitive, trembling bones he’d first guided your hands to, hesitant and nervous at first, then eagerly arching into your touch when pleasure bloomed along the path of your fingers. You love the soft, full magic that holds them together too, that thrills you with its beauty and the indescribable emotions it offers. You’d love it just as much if all there ever had been was this. Whatever he is, you want. He sees it in your face, and his expression grows sweetly pained as magic beads at the inside corners of his sockets and slips down the grooves beneath.

“ohhh…” His voice cracks in a quiet moan, and you feel his magic flood out thickly at the tight-soft point of resonance he has slicking insistently against your clit. Your hands slip away from his face to wrap him again, pull him closer. “….i know you do,” he whispers tightly, sockets slipping all the way shut, “...know you do. … _mm_ _h..._ ” He grabs your hip with a tight grunt, rests his forehead on your shoulder and moves against you short-quick and insistent for a few minutes, eager little breaths and tiny mewls of enjoyment escaping him in occasional syncopation with his movements.

Your heart gives a wicked little thud; this is pretty much as urgent as he gets without genitalia, and there’s something subversively exciting about the way he clutches at you, the shameless enthusiasm with which he shakes and waggles your body under his pelvis. He’s just bare bones and soft magic, and he gives you everything he has, just like always.

The way he fucks would be messy if it wasn’t also so meticulous; nevertheless, it’s jiggly and undignified and _so fucking_ _good_. His broken little sounds are words sometimes, asking if you feel him, asking if you like it, assuring you he knows you do. You hum along in agreement and acknowledgement as your fatigued arms tighten despite you, loving the easy call and response you slide into, staying connected and present with each other even with your souls still inside.

Endorphins flood your system as his rapid movements combine with enough magic shedding to leave you constantly wet with it, tingling away only to be refreshed with another gratified little noise from him as he shakes and shivers his pleasure out all over you. His panted whispers describe how good it feels to him when that happens, and he hugs you tight as the little drops and effervescent spillovers mingle sloppily with your arousal. Oh, fuck, that’s… whoo. That’s _really_ getting you there.

His shuddering, deep groan cracks right in half when you caress his occipital bone with your palm, then he lifts his face to huff out a lusty sigh as he returns to the tireless, patient grind you both know will take you right home. Oh...oof. He opens his sockets back up because he can tell you’re close and he likes to watch, but gives you a suspicious look when he dips his head down to be kissed and you turn your face away instead.

“you too good for your own come now?” he slurs breathily down at you, amused voice thick with slow pleasure and Grillby’s godawful seasoning. Your breath hitches a few times, then you hold it until the tension snaps, sending you right over the edge. He makes a happy gasp when he sees you let go, leans his chest into you suddenly to feel the hammer of your heart while making room at your groin. There’s a high wiggle and a pause, like he’s tossing you up and anticipating catching you there on his pelvis, a perfect landing right where he wants you. He also unfortunately sighs right in your face again, then leans back up just as abruptly with a deliberate, calculated curve traveling through his spine to flick his pelvis up repeatedly, lifting you right to the peak on the seething magic in his pubic symphysis.

“You _smell like fish fries_ ,” you wail, followed only by choked, wordless noises as you jerk your climax wetly against him, sore arms and fingers shakily pressing out its rhythm at the back of his ribcage.

“ _ohhh_ , that’s it, babe,” he whispers intently between pleased little grunts, massaging your thigh and scalp encouragingly as you come all over his earnest, trembling-wet pubis. “ _there_ you go...yeah, i know ’m a smelly-ton...gonna fix it in a minute, i-” He cuts off with a gasp as your tired mouth slathers a kiss on his humerus with sloppy, orgasmic enthusiasm.

“fff _fuck_ ,” he groans, rolling his face into your chest as he half-collapses, still working you over with insistent movements; you pant and spasm, humming the dregs of your pleasure out contentedly. He keeps going until you’re gasping and twitching, then finally comes to rest heavy on you with a final slow back-and-forth, spending out a last soaking rush of magic. His spine clacks all along its length, and he lets out a soul-deep, creaking sigh of satisfaction.

Smooth bone arms snake around under you as he wiggles up just a little, puts his leg back outside yours and buries his face in your neck. You stroke him soothingly as he wriggles even closer, curling up and in until he’s like a compact little bone backpack on the front of you. You relax and let your mind drift until you feel his shoulders shake, feel the tingle of his magic against your skin again. Your own eyes prickle sympathetically; you know he’s putting it off, seeking solace in your arms and avoiding something he really doesn’t want to deal with.

“Hey,” you say softly, rubbing the back of his skull with your palm, caressing between his spinal processes with the fingers of your other hand. “Hey. It’s okay.”

“’m so pissed off,” he whispers huskily, voice high and thick with tears. Awww, fuck. You can practically feel your heart cracking in half. Atmospheric tension from impending doom aside, he feels betrayed by one of his relatively few _close_ friends. The one he tells almost everything to, the one who keeps his secrets, the one he can just let it all hang out with.

“I know.” You wish you had something better to say, but it’s not like you can do anything about this. Not right now, anyways.

“jus’ wanna tell her to fuck off, an n-never go back,” he hiccups softly.

“Want me to beat everybody up for you?” you ask quietly, and get rewarded with a teary snort. “Give em all wedgies?”

He hiccups, breath hitching as he tries to calm himself. “al doesn’t wear underpants,” he sniffles.

“Oh really,” you say speculatively. “I’ll have to remember that.”

That finally makes him lean up and look at you, wiping his sockets one by one on a corner of the blanket as he gives you a suspicious glare.

“What?” you say, raising your eyebrows at him, then you make them do a little dance just like Alphys when she’s being pervy. He manages a reluctant chuckle, then he sighs explosively and glances to the side.

“okay. let’s go scrape this off an’ face the music,” he exhales, gives a preparatory little wiggle and hops off you.

He looks down at your sprawling, purposely hedonistic pose fondly once he’s standing there all grubby, naked, and perfect. His grin sharpens even as another fat leftover tear rolls down and off his chin, but he ignores it and gallantly offers his hand to help you up. You accept it with a groan, hesitate on your way to the bathroom, then duck down with another groan to grab a double dose of pain meds out of your bag.

When you get there, he reaches out quickly and turns on the sink tap for you, because apparently he really, _really_ doesn’t want to let go of your hand. You give it a reassuring little squeeze as you bend over to drink out of it. The expression that flits across his skull that you catch a glimpse of in the mirror makes your soul twinge, but in a better way than before.

You turn the handholding into a game, and you end up winning when he has to let go to wash your hair.

Welp.

That’s what he gets for getting his french fried fish-langes all over it.

***

Sans and Alphys face opposite sides of the room, silent as they tap and stare grimly, occasionally giving each other terse, flat information. They keep their gaze about five inches to the left of each other when looking becomes absolutely necessary, and there’s no banter. You haven’t been back at the lab for even an hour yet, but you’re already sick of this.

“I have a question for you both,” you say into the clickity silence, using your lecture hall voice for emphasis.

They’re each looking five inches to the left of _you_ now.

“Were either of you going to tell me at some point my sister’s playing peek-a-soul with Toriel, or…?”

Good. Now they’re looking at you for real.

“W-why would we t-tell you that?” Alphys asks, baffled enough to almost glance at Sans for guidance. She catches herself in time. “It’s none of our b-b-business.”

“If Ange was a _monster_ , it wouldn’t be,” you say flatly, because even though you’re provoking them on purpose you still mean what you’re saying. “Alphys… I might give a pass to. But Sans?” you give him a stern look. “You _know_ how much the way I saw our relationship changed once we started showing souls and whatnot.” The look gets a little sterner, since he still seems baffled. Alphys looks somewhere between pruriently fascinated and mildly alarmed. “I didn’t realize you were interested in a romantic relationship until then, remember?” Still nothing. Wow.

“What’s the _opposite of that_ , Sans?” Theeere he goes. Yep. Too smart for his own good; makes him miss things he shouldn’t sometimes too.

“Yeah. Exactly. Now, I don’t know for sure if Angie though she and Toriel were together-together, and the only way to really find that out is to see what happens next. If there is a next.” Your smile goes sharp enough that you can feel it.

“Speaking of which, how are you two feeling about our upcoming annihilation? It seems like you’re both ready to go under without so much as a fucking gurgle, much less a fight. What’s up with that?”

They both hunch in on themselves a tiny bit before going utterly still in perfect unison. It’d be cute if you weren’t pissed.

“Sans. Alphys feels guilty for creating Flowey in the first place, which you should fucking know by now. Of course she’s going to do anything she can to try and help him, even if it means hastening our obliteration or whatever.” Alphys’s nictitating membranes come up to cover the lower half of her eyes. Well, you hit something, although you're not sure what.

“Alphys. You know how Sans is about his personal...stuff. You know you’re one of the only people he trusts with that, so why the hell would you let some strange human poke at it?”

Alphys turns a weird color under her scales, and looks like she’s about to barf. You don’t know if she actually can or not, so you just wait to see what happens.

“I d-didn’t,” she stutters, the whisper barely audible. The points in Sans’s sockets are jerked sideways by her words, and he’s looking at her with something like… huh. You’re not sure, but at least he’s finally looking at her. Which is doubly good, since she’s apparently telling the truth.

“Oh shit,” you hear yourself say high and surprised. “You really _didn’t_ know, did you.”

“Foster’s a c-consultant,” Alphys says quietly, looking at nothing in particular. “Frisk shouldn’t h-have brought her h-h-here. It’s dangerous, especially c-considering Foster is one of the only h-humans to figure out what’s happening with the r-r-reintegration.” You make a note to look into what ‘reintegration’ could mean with extreme urgency, otherwise, you wait. This is going surprisingly well. But.

“Why didn’t you say so _yesterday_?” you ask, still more than a little frustrated.

“cause she’s lying to _frisk_ ,” Sans says wonderingly.

Alphys flinches, still looking at nothing as Sans continues.

“it’s taking longer than it was supposed to, and frisk brought dr pasta here ta see why. but it’s taking too long on purpose, and she had to...” His face goes from bemused to utterly blank; your heart breaks again because that usually covers up guilt. Alphys still isn’t looking at him, eyes almost completely covered by her membranes now.

Alphys’s claws fiddle with her buttons.

“hey.”

Sans paddles his feet to roll his stool over to Alphys’s padded chair; hits the lever underneath to settle it down to his height, then hunches their bodies together, grabs the high back of her chair and leans in. You can hear his whisper, but not what he says. It’s been obvious for a long time that Sans has to _try_ in order to keep you from understanding what he says, however he says it; something to do with how he feels about you. You hear a wet little sniffle from Alphys, but she doesn’t say anything you can hear. Sans keeps talking softly behind the privacy his hoodie’s making, and you feel some of the tension leaving your shoulders.

You sigh in relief; fucking _finally_.

After a few minutes you hear the unmistakable rasp of claws against bone; Alphys’s fingers appear on Sans’s skull and stroke across, then come to rest there as he talks quietly, leaning in closer and bowing his head. You dismiss your viewer and plant an elbow on the armrest of the couch you’ve claimed, grinning like you’re at a show as you set your cheek on your fist. Hmm. There’s a stuttered whisper that does actually manage to elude you, and some soft sighs, too. Wow. Alphys’s claws eventually rasp over his skull again with a little clack-tap before they disappear, and Sans finally settles back into his regular posture with a deeper sigh.

“By all means, keep making out,” you say, amusement heavy in your voice as they both startle gently and turn to look at you. “It’s nice to finally see some of the action I’ve heard so much about.”

“A-action?” Alphys asks, tilting her head inquisitively.

You sigh. “The handjobs you guys used to do on the couch here during your hentai watchalongs that you never shut up about,” you clarify. “Yeah, that catgirl’s been out of the bag for like a year,” you giggle as Alphys blushes slightly. Then she and Sans glance at each other and give an identical shrug.

“pretty sure the only place that counts as making out is in pap’s dating manual,” Sans snorts, then gives a laborious sigh. “guess i better go release the kraken.”

“Did she eat the spaghetti?” Alphys asks, making you blink.

“nah,” Sans says easily. “guess she can’t handle a true gourmet.” he shrug. “more for me,” he adds with a grin, then shuffles off to the ‘kitchen.’

You look at Alphys, who gives you a weak smile. “They n-n-never eat it,” she says, face warming to something a little more comfortable. “So Sans eats it f-for them, and then he tells P-p-papyrus that the h-human did.”

You raise an eyebrow, and Alphys manages a giggle.

“He’s just g-glad his brother’s eating,” she manages with a wink. “Everybody’s h-h-happy.”

“Where does he take them? The humans from the holding area or whatever.”

She exhales thoughtfully. “It’s been a while, but they always go to Papyrus,” she signs, using Frisk’s name sign for him. “He decides what to do with them, since Sans won’t.” She snerks quietly. “He’d probably just let them live their lives out there, dropping some spaghetti in every once in a while if they’re lucky.”

“That’s kinda fucked up,” you say aloud.

“what is?” Sans asks, coming back from the kitchen.

“That was quick,” you say incredulously.

“not much to it. paps was ready for her.”

“Did she shit her pants?” you ask with a little grin, but he doesn’t laugh like he usually would, just shakes his head and goes back to the stool to sit heavily. As a matter of fact, as he and Alphys go on with their work and you finally get back to yours, you notice his leg bouncing a bit out of the corner of your eye, which strikes you as super weird. He stops and starts that a few times, then about half an hour later you hear the sound of his phalanges rattling across his teeth. You can see Alphys give him a sidelong glance from this angle; he flinches, taps something messily across his far keyboard, then swats at the desk moodily.

“fuck,” he whispers, the stops to rub both hands over his face and lets them drop to hang between his legs with a sigh, then hangs his head to look at his hands.

“It’s okay, Sans,” Alphys murmurs quietly without looking at him.

“gotta take a nap,” he drones, sounding oddly defeated.

“It’s okay,” she says again. “Long or sh-short?”

He closes his sockets and covers them with one hand. “say long, jus’ ta be on the safe side.”

“See you t-then,” she adds gently.

He grunts, takes a deep breath, then stands more abruptly than necessary and heads through the kitchen slightly quicker than his usual pace. He keeps his head ducked, and doesn’t look at you as he passes. You hear the door to the nap room close behind him.

When you look back at Alphys, she’s looking at you too.

“Is he angry?” you gesture hesitantly. “Do you think something happened?”

Alphys exhales with a sad smile, shakes her head and turns around to sign back at you. “He’s frustrated that he needs to take a break this soon after taking a day off,” she says. She also leaves out the fact that he feels guilty for spending a whole day pissed off at her for something she didn’t do, even if it was an entirely reasonable misunderstanding to have under the circumstances. And whatever the emotionally draining conversation they’d just had been probably didn’t help much either.

You frown a second.

“Did he have his not-okay...” you frown a second, “...v-i-b-e? That feeling he gets when he needs Papyrus?”

She blinks at you. “You can feel that?” You nod, and her gaze grows hooded and speculative. “No,” she signs slowly. “He can take care of this himself. He just needs a little time, and he’ll be fine.” She sighs, looks tired.

“When was the last time _you_ had a break?” you ask, leaning forward to peer at her. “You haven’t had Sans here to keep an eye on you, I bet you’re all out of whack,” you gesture imperiously. “Are you tired too? Do you need to go and join-”

She shakes her head adamantly. “No, I’m fine, I just...” She glances down, then back at you.

“Can I ask you a question about something you said before?” you try, and she straightens up a little. Well, as much as she _can_ , anyways.

“You said this, um. F-o-s-t-e-r-” you look askance question at her; she nods, “-this person knows about something called ‘the reintegration’. R-e-i-n-t-e-g-r-a-t-i-o-n,” you add for clarity. “Is that what I think it is?”

Alphys gives you an indulgent look. “What do you think it is?”

“I think it has to do with all the magic being released since the barrier was destroyed, and what it’s going to do, or...is doing? To the world,” you gesture plain as plaid.

“You’re not wrong,” she signs flippantly, which makes you lean forward. That’s what Sans says when you’re closer to the truth than he’s comfortable with.

“I know you must have a theory.”

Her nictitating membranes come up under her eyes again; it always gives her a shifty, calculating aspect and is extremely adorable.

“I do,” she admits, then grins at you. She and Sans really are a lot alike, aren’t they.

“What I think is that before the barrier was created, magic and physical substance existed in balance throughout everything. Monsters, humans, plants and animals...everything.”

You blink, think about it.

“That makes sense,” you admit.

“But when humans created the barrier, it removed the nonphysical substance from everything, and it all got stuffed into the barrier. Not just monsters. But all that magic, it...left the space where it used to be.”

“The space between particles?”

She nods perfunctorily. “And now that the barrier’s gone, magic is going back where it’s basically supposed to, but...” She looks like she’s thinking carefully about what to say next. “Because it was artificially created, the barrier… it did things no one could have predicted. Although I don’t know how the Core got made,” you can see she obviously has her theories there too; apparently Sans hasn’t shared much with her there, “I can work backwards from the beginning and see there would have been a disaster if it hadn’t been built. Without it, the entire underground would have collapsed in on itself a long time ago, and probably would have taken the earth with it,” she says almost casually.

“Well, that is terrifying,” you gesture back in similar tone. You consider that she neatly avoided telling you what exactly the magic going back into those spaces is doing to everything, and whether or not it’s the same thing that happens to the trash that falls underground. You’re pretty sure things turning entirely to magic isn’t re-establishing a-

Then both of you hear a quiet sound from the other room ( ~~the other room~~ ). Alphys’s face twitches almost imperceptibly, and that’s what makes you realize Sans is crying softly, so when the sound happens again you recognize it more easily. You meet each others’s eyes for a long moment, then you make what you hope is a subtle gesture of inquiry at your sternum. She flushes like a neon sunset anyways, but she looks away as her head inclines maybe an inch. After all, if you were a monster you’d already know. Awkward, but at least Sans is taking care of himself.

“It would have turned into a black hole?” you gesture, and she looks glad that you’re changing the subject.

“It’s possible, yes,” she says. “I think? Whatever it was, it would definitely be something bad. Sans would know better exactly what would have happened than I would, and I can make a better estimate than he can what pre-barrier environmental balance would have been like,” she adds with a shrug.

“Does Sans have a pet black hole?” you ask, now that you’re thinking about it.

She rolls her eyes.

“He’s got a pet _theory_ ,” she gestures indulgently. “He wants to see if he puts enough of the same thing in the same place, if it’ll become dense enough to collapse and make one instead of using a collider.”

“Oh. But...will that actually work?”

“ _I_ don’t know,” Alphys grins. “I can’t even see what he’s actually _measuring_.”

You shrug and grin, then try not to blush when you hear another muffled sound in the non-clacking, non-talking quiet. You know Alphys is able to hear it, and you also know from familiarity that it’s the soft exhale Sans makes when he pushes magic in his soul. A lot, from the sound of it, but this doesn’t seem to bother her at all, unlike when she heard him crying. In fact, she hasn’t even stopped talking. Now you have no clue what she’s saying, so you hold up a hand, studiously ignoring another almost-moan. He’s uh. Really going at it, isn’t he.

“Sorry,” you gesture sheepishly, “I didn’t quite...catch that.”

“ _I’m_ sorry,” she says, ducking her head. “I know I get a little too technical for you sometimes! I just meant that we want to figure out if it’s something about the equipment that keeps you from seeing it, or if it’s something inherent to your vision!”

Ohhh. She’s talking about how you can’t see what happens when physical substance turns into magic. The side project they had in mind before you took a little field trip without a permission slip and it all went to hell.

You sigh. Monsters are so fucking weird sometimes. You can sit here and have a conversation with the perviest monster in the underground while listening to your romantic partner make ardent love to himself two rooms away and she’s cool as a cucumber, but apparently if you mention what he’s doing she’ll be blushing and stuttering her way right through the floor in no time.

“What he’s doing really doesn’t bother you?” you finally just ask.

She tilts her head at you instead of any of the other reactions you expected.

“Why would it?” she says in apparently sincere bafflement.

Actually. That’s kind of a good question. Now you’re the one blushing and looking at your hands.

“I, um…you’re not embarrassed now that I’m talking about it?”

She frowns at you for a second, then snorts and rubs her eyes. “In _this_ kind of context, the sign you made is very...” she gives you a sidelong glance, makes a little sound in her throat. “Suggestive. It surprised me.” Your face feels like it could melt through solid steel now. Whoopsie doopsie. She’s grinning, but it’s not unkind. “It’s the... _context_ ,” she tries again, looking uncomfortable but sincere. Oh. That’s right, she can feel what’s going on, or is...aware of it to some degree. So hearing it probably isn’t...a surprise? Or...more than it already is?

“Sans told me about monster souls,” you gesture slowly. “How they’re all the same soul, and...um...”

“I know,” she admits easily. “I told him he should, and that he should show you if you wanted.” She looks like she’s thinking hard now. “It’s not the same as human sex things,” she tries, slowly forming the words with a speculative look. “And it’s not like what monsters with genitalia do, either...Sans is actually a bit more shy about it than most people,” she says, which honestly surprises you. She smiles knowingly. “Not here, though. Sans and I never liked each other in that way, but I’ve seen his soul for other reasons.” You shut your mouth and nod cautiously. “His soul is a monsters’s soul, even if it has two human traits on it. In a way, he actually has five souls,” she adds, and your mouth falls open again. She snickers quietly at your expression before continuing. “Human souls are the traits, more or less,” she explains. “The color is the soul, but humans with the same traits aren’t the same soul,” she says, and you frown a little wondering if that’s a wonky ASL translation. “Not like monsters are,” she says to clarify, and you nod cautiously. “Monster souls are three-in-one, plus he has the two human traits, so that makes five,” she finishes with a flourish like it’s a magic trick, making you giggle too. Then you sober up when something else occurs to you.

“Can I ask you a question?”

She nods.

“Is whatever that stuff is that Sans makes human or monster?”

She looks away thoughtfully for a long time; it’s a really intense look on her. A little scary sometimes, even. You jump when her eyes finally meet yours.

“As far as I can tell,” she gestures carefully, “it’s neither. It’s not a person. It has the potential to become part of a person, to be absorbed by them, but it isn’t of itself...anything that could be categorized that way.”

“How is that possible, though?”

“The same way Sans himself is,” she replies with alacrity. “The same way Frisk is, or any of us.” She smiles. “We just are, and we have to deal with that somehow.”

You press your lips together; she’s giving you some kind of opening there, but you’re not sure what. “What is Frisk trying to do, really?”

Alphys’s gaze grows hooded, and she sighs. “They’re trying to put Asriel back the way he was, but...”

“I’m guessing nothing can actually turn Asriel into a monster, right? Since his soul’s actually just...part of Chara’s?”

“I don’t know,” she signs, face and body language giving nothing away. “It was Chara’s soul, but Asriel’s dust. They became the same thing.”

You blink rapidly.

“C-o-n-t-i-n-u-o-u-s?”

She doesn’t look at you directly, but her head inclines very slightly.

“Another impossible thing we all have to deal with, I guess.” You exhale in frustration. “If I wanted to convince Frisk that Asriel should be allowed to die, how would I do that?”

She sits quietly, says nothing. You wait until you’re sure, then ask something else.

“If I wanted to stall Frisk, what should I do?”

The same again, but just when you’re about to give up her fingers twitch through a sentence reluctantly.

“You’re already doing it.” Same emotionless delivery, other than the reluctance. No idea if she’s happy about that or not, or if you’re supposed to read into it somehow, or... Ugh.

You blow a long, exhausted raspberry at her, and she blinks in confusion.

“I’m going to make some tea,” you say aloud with a smile. “Do you want any?”

“Sure,” she says brightly. “M-m-make it with the Sans water,” she specifies, already turning around with a sigh. “You know h-how it is.” She glances over her shoulder wickedly. “ _Cloacas_ ,” she adds in a stage whisper. “Eheheheheh...”

You shake your head gently as you head to the kitchen. She really is delightful, and you like her raunchy jokes. She cares about Sans, and is apparently taking his advice or something in a way he didn’t expect. Stalling Frisk, making this take longer...for whatever reason he has. Waiting something out maybe, although you’re having a hard time imagining what. Then again, waiting is Sans’s default way of dealing with almost everything, and it frustrates you into wondering if this is just his way of giving up and letting the tide take him under…. But.

But this is the one thing he hasn’t budged an inch on disclosing to you. Considering everything else you know by now, both personally about him, and in general about monsters…you sigh. With everything together, he must have a good reason, but it still bugs the shit out of you sometimes.

You fill the kettle, then lean against the trash-covered counter and stare at the floor while it heats. It’s super hard, stone or concrete or something monsters make that’s like it. You kick some of the trash around to take a better look, and unearth a big, square depression with four deeper round holes in each corner. Looks like there’s some trash stuffed in there too, but when you lean in, you get a weird feeling in the pit of your stomach. You shake your head to clear something away, then lean in again. Looks like something big was bolted down in here at some point, right into the stone. Some kind of heavy equipment, maybe? Like a big, glinting, stainless steel…

Exam table.

“you okay?”

You jump about a foot straight in the air, heart hammering wildly. “Fuck,” you whisper, rubbing your chest for a second as you lean against the counter, panting.

“guess that’s an answer,” Sans observes mildly, phalanges clacking rapidly over a closed socket. “that tea got caffeine in it? not sure you need any if you’re getting jumpy over one lil skeleton.” He looks sleepy, relaxed, and infinitely calmer than earlier. You’re guessing the actual nap part wasn’t extended or maybe even required, but he looks a lot better anyhow.

“No, I’m fine,” you say, sighing out the rest of it. “That wasn’t a very long nap,” you comment.

“eh. sometimes a lil dab’ll do ya,” he says, sockets ovalling lazily. Yeah, you know that look.

“Sounded like a little more than a dab,” you retort quietly with a grin.

He just shrugs, utterly unconcerned. “you sure you’re ok? you still look kinda rattled. s’not really like you.”

“I was just wondering…was this place for something else before?”

He looks around and shakes his head. “Before what?”

“Before you and Alphys worked here.”

He shrugs.

“does it matter?” he says with an easy grin. “it’s mine now.” He shuffles a drift of wrappers, torn paper, a few ugly socks and other assorted trash across the floor with his slipper, covering the square depression back up. “got all my stuff here n everything,” he quips smugly.

“Sans, if you’re back up, y-you need to be w-w-working. We’re already ridiculously b-b-behind schedule,” Alphys calls from the other room. “I’d l-like to see my w-wife again someday, and she hates it here.”

The other room.

Why do you feel like so many of your problems arise from things that should be dead, but aren’t?

“will you bring me some tea too?” Sans asks impishly, making his sadsack sockets at you.

“Okay,” you smile. “I won’t even salt the rim with my asshole this time.”

“love you,” he says, whole face soft and happy.

“Love you too,” you reply as he shuffles slowly away to go do his job.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> o shit y'all  
> i broke 400k words with this chapter.  
> well...we are very close now.   
> :)


	62. fed up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alanis Morissette – All I Really Want  
> https://youtu.be/zdIsRewzVZ4

You’re having a remarkably bad day, so Frisk is over helping you keep an eye on the kids while Angie goes… “out”. You’d ended up tapping out of The Hole early since you’d finished up your seminar materials and saw an actual sunny day on the forecast despite the time of year. You’d left that part out of your reasoning when you’d explained to Sans, since you didn’t want to bum him out even more than he already was by having had his round of tasks extended by about 30 hours.

Now you’re in bed, trying not to be pissed off because you can’t even enjoy it. You sigh, staring at the wall. You could read or watch something, maybe even write… if you actually did something about how you feel. But you’re not coping with your disappointment very well, and...okay yeah. You’re kind of extremely frustrated. By a lot of things.

One of those things decides to come in and check on you.

“Are you sure you won’t take these?” they gesture, then produce the bottle of pills and wave them at you. If they were going for a rattle, they’d have to shake them a lot harder than that.

“You’re _not my doctor_ , Frisk,” you reply aloud.

They can read your lips in the lovely sunshine striping through the curtains you’d half-closed in pique when the pain got bad earlier. Maybe it’s from days of sleeping with a sack of bones on a broken-down couch. Maybe it’s from too much magic and not enough vitamins in your diet, or the fact that you had to cancel two appointments with Vulkin due to shitty timing and surplus drama. Maybe the broken glass and white-hot barbed wire fairy decided to visit your bones because you forgot to leave her out a bowl of milk. Maybe it _doesn’t fucking matter_ because _everything is suffering_ and if it hurts this bad maybe absolute annihilation will come as a relief.

Frisk plops the pills down on your nightstand and lifts their hands, signing rapidly with a condescending look on their face.

“Look, this is exactly why you _have_ these, right? If you’re in so much pain you can’t even sit downstairs with the kids, and you can’t even talk to me-”

White-hot rage spikes in you, before you know it you’re rolling onto your back and lifting your arms to reply.

“You always know what’s best for everyone, don’t you?” you slash out messily, breathy grunts hissing through your teeth. “You think you know everything there is to know, you’re so old and wise. Well, _I_ know my sister’s out fucking your mom in half while you watch her kids right now,” you wave, grimacing meanly, “so i’m pretty sure you’re the sucker here. How about you learn to _mind your own_ _goddamn_ _business_ before you hear even more things you don’t want to?”

The surprised and grossed out look on their face isn’t nearly as satisfying as you want it to be, although it is a little funny when you remember it later. And of course right after you laugh you’re sorry, but right _now_? You’re fucking pissed. Everything you care about, everything you’ve worked so hard for, everything you almost died to earn is about to be taken away from you by a six foot two, three hundred pound _child_. You grind your teeth desperately to keep your eyes from spilling over as you try to stare them down.

Frisk’s eyebrows rise until they disappear into their choppy, terrible bangs as you cry angrily at them, and they pull out their phone and start ostentatiously sending a message.

“Are you fucking _snitching on me_?” You gasp aloud in sincere outrage, but they don’t even look up before turning around and leaving.

You use the last of your strength to pull the blanket over your head, then proceed to get tears and snot all over it.

After a little while you hear a familiar shuffle.

“heya, good lookin’,” Sans says quietly.

“I can’t believe Frisk fucking snitched on me,” you choke. “What a piece of shit.”

“hey now,” he says quietly. “that’s my kid you’re talkin bout there.”

You make a really embarrassing noise that sounds ridiculously close to ‘boo-hoo’ instead of saying that you don’t care like you meant to. He doesn’t even sigh at you; not that you can hear it with all the sniveling you’re doing, anyhow. As far as you know he’s just standing there, like he doesn’t need to get his work done yesterday, like you’re not all going to fucking die or superdie or hyperdie or whatever soon, like he’s just as glad to keep standing there until you decide to talk to him.

“there a password for this blanket fort?” he asks quietly after a little while. “want me to guess it?”

There’s like a _pocket_ of snot around your face in here.

“mm. how bout, uh. ‘i’m a poopskull?’”

It’s all yucky and clammy.

“is it...uh… ‘implementation of antidisestablishmentarianism’?”

Everything hurts.

“is it… ‘cloaca queef armageddon’?”

Existing hurts.

“how bout, uh…rumplestiltskin?”

“You g-got it,” you croak in a voice that barely sounds like you.

You can hear the smile in his voice. “everybody loves a classic, huh?”

You feel someone wiggling the bed on the other side, and Sans carefully creeps across until his bony self is curled up against your back.

“got something for ya, ya big baby,” he whispers as his arm slides gently over your body. He’s holding something up towards your face.

It’s one of his torn-label, grotty, reused magic-plastic bottles.

With a fucking _rubber nipple_ stuck on the end so you don’t have to sit up to drink it.

“I hate you so much,” you rasp.

“c’monnnnn,” he whispers implacably, turning it back and forth under your chin like a wiggle that doesn’t jostle your body. “it’s my kink. do it for the vine.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“dunno.”

“What is it?”

“aardvark jizz,” he replies promptly, then starts literally poking your snotty lips under the covers with the tip of the nipple.

“I can’t breathe out of my nose,” you complain, refusing to notice that your tears have stopped.

“pretend it’s payin’ your rent and just suck it down,” he whispers in the same tone, like he’s ready to do this until the end of time. “what happens under the blanket, stays under the blanket.”

You sigh painfully and let the still-undisputed fingerbone champion literally bottle feed you something that tastes like seventeen different things at once, and despite yourself you start to feel less hopeless almost immediately.

“What _is_ this?” you ask again when you need to take a breath. He just taps what you feel is two pills against your lower lip instead of answering.

“say ‘ahh’,” he mumbles, nudging the back of your neck with his forehead very, very gently.

“I’m already mouthbreathing,” you gripe.

“noticed that, yeah. don’t want you ta breathe _these_ though, k? _these_ go down the _other_ hole,” he drawls patiently. You snort, spraying the inside of the blanket again.

“I think you mean the other _pipe_.”

“tomato, tomahto.” He taps your lips with drugs until you close them around the pills (and the hard little tips of his fingers which kinda taste like what you suspect is dog food), getting it over with since they’re starting to get wet and do that bitter-dissolving thing they do. You take your meds and drink your bottle like a good baby, and once it’s empty he makes it disappear and just holds you for a long time.

“wanna washcloth?”

“Yeah,” you croak. You don’t worry about how it’s wet and warm when he produces it; you blow your nose in it after you’re done wiping and he takes it back. You push the blanket off your face finally so it doesn’t get re-snotted immediately. Crankytown shame fort: disengage.

“any better yet?” he asks after even longer.

“No,” you mutter peevishly. “Yes,” you ameliorate after five more seconds.

“mm,” he sighs, seeming satisfied with the admission. “good deal. you gonna be ok til i finish up work?”

“I just want to sleep until the weekend,” you whine a little muzzily.

“’s already the weekend.”

“What the _fuck_ ,” you croak. “How long have I been in bed? Where the hell is _Angie_?”

“fuckin frisk’s mom in half takes a long time,” he says mildly as he rubs your shoulder. Your face gets hot, which hurts. On account of all the crying and whatnot.

“awww, there ya go,” Sans says, sounding sincerely pleased. “left you an opening wide’s my ass, and you didn’t even rake it over the coals.” He smiles, smooths the blanket over you. “turns out i only got about six hours left, so why don’t you take a nice long nap, and when you wake up we’ll do something else, huh?” His grin twitches a little. “pretty much anything’s gonna be better than whatever this is, right? nowhere ta go but up.”

Funny thing is once the pain ebbs oh-so-slightly, you conk right out.

***

When you wake up, your face is glued to the pillow. The pain of course is still there; you just care a little less. Or maybe...it feels more like pain, and less like a malevolent gnome with an air horn in both hands is running through your body kicking all the furniture to death.

You still just lie there, but it’s more like gathering your thoughts and returning to conscious than motionlessly resenting your continued existence.

And then of course Frisk comes back.

Because of fucking _course_ they do.

They have food, water, and more pills for you. The food is all magic, so there are vitamins to go along with it.

You quietly and resentfully partake of all, and eventually they just start talking to you like you’re a person. That fucker.

“You figured it out, right?”

“What?” you reply hesitantly.

“That everything’s turning to magic, the same way it does when they bring it underground. The whole world, and everything in it.”

You shrug, and their expression hardens.

“Humans can’t survive on magic by itself,” they sign, and you manage to suppress a wince. “I’ve had human experts looking into it for a while now, and it’s true. We need trace minerals, things like that.”

You give them a look.

“Can _you_ see what the stuff turns into when it...turns into magic?” you ask. “The particles?”

Frisk looks back at you, face giving away absolutely nothing. You sigh heavily; they’re not going to answer.

“Foster says everything’s turning in a way that can’t be reversed or stopped,” Frisk signs once they see you know they aren’t. “If that’s true, isn’t it better that I keep that from happening?”

Foster? Who the...oh. Doctor Pasta. You shake your head. Frisk’s so hard to figure out sometimes. It’s like half the time they can’t wait for humanity to reap what they’ve sown, the rest like they’re desperately trying to save them all.

You wonder when you started thinking of humanity as “them”. You talk about it almost like Frisk does, sometimes.

Maybe you should stop being an asshole and just have a conversation. You actually feel a lot better after eating, drinking, and actually taking care of yourself instead of taking your wrath out on your own body, then on anyone unlucky enough to get within speaking distance of you. After all, the look on Frisk’s face is exactly the same as the one they’d had the first time they’d come in, and for some reason it doesn’t seem condescending at all now.

Yep. They’re actually listening to you, and they asked you a serious question. It’s time to do what you can, to fight with the only weapon you have. You’ve known ever since the first time Sans drew you into an encounter and checked you.

You’re right in the place where science becomes philosophy once again, and you try and figure out how to explain this.

“Magic is what connects everything,” you sign slowly. “It exists in between everything else, and it’s all one piece. Even if you keep dividing it, it’s still...one. The same number, no matter how many.” You frown, thinking hard. “It’s going back in, but because of the barrier…because it was in place for so long, everything outside it was thrown way out of balance. Everything became disconnected, and nothing could communicate. And humans couldn’t communicate with everything around them anymore, either.”

You sigh out a little more tension, and Frisk looks at you sharply with those black, glittering irises.

“Magic is the SOUL of the world,” you sign carefully, make sure they understand.

Frisk gapes at you.

“It’s the spirit that joins everything; it’s what makes everything _unified_. A continuum, the way it was always supposed to be. And for _some_ fucking ridiculous reason, humans decided to take the soul of the world and shove it in a pit. They buried it alive and then pretended it never had one. But because of the barrier, everything forgot how to… it can’t…”

There aren’t words for this idea, so you find some other ones to shove in the space where they’re supposed to be. “Everything outside the barrier forgot how to speak magic, so now that it’s back, it has to learn a new….new way to speak it. And in order to speak to a continuum, in order to touch it, you have to _become_. The basic premise of what we think of as “matter” has to change because magic is here again now.”

Frisk’s eyes quiver darkly. They’re listening.

“Every people have always had common myths and stories, and there are two themes that have always been universal. People that aren’t human, and forces we can’t see that affect the environment. And it’s only been a really short window of time in the history of humanity where there was this level of agreement that neither of those things actually exist. For thousands of years, all people everywhere agreed that both of those things existed, because…they did.”

Frisk looks like they don’t really know what to do with that information. So you help them out.

“Humans aren’t going to ‘die out’,(Frisk). We’re going to _change_ ,” you gesture slow and clear, say their name aloud for emphasis. Then you sigh heavily. “I really blame the legacy of colonialism for this,” you muse bitterly. “It reminds me of reading how Europeans used to pretend anyone who went to live with colonized peoples under their laws and customs was actually dead, or ‘mysteriously disappeared without a trace.’”

“Like Roanoke?” Frisk asks, mouth quirking slightly.

“Exactly,” you reply with a frustratedly amused exhale. “As if their sisters and husbands and mothers were much better off dead than living differently than they were used to.” You shake your head in disbelief. “Can you even imagine being that afraid and arrogant?”

Frisk looks oddly displeased by that. “Are you making some kind of point there?”

You laugh, and their expression turns mildly offended. You shake your head; they really are still young, aren’t they.

“My mom used to say this thing. ‘A hit dog will holler’.”

“What exactly does that mean?”

“It means you had a defensive reaction because you feel guilty.”

“It doesn’t really seem like it should mean that,” Frisk gestures, and they have a point. “And hitting dogs is wrong.”

You give them a rueful little smile. “I can’t argue with that,” you admit easily. The silence stretches, and you meet Frisk’s eyes again.

“Is it really so hard to just accept?” you ask after a while.

Frisk meets your gaze squarely, then tilts their head at you.

“Yes,” they answer like it’s obvious.

You look long and hard at Frisk, having a quiet little epiphany of your own. You’ve known that Frisk is technically two people who aren’t actually separate for a long time now, and you thought you’d worked that into your pragmatic, day to day interactions with them. But...that’s the thing. Sometimes they react in a way that’s cynical and hopeless, while at others they seem almost desperately optimistic.

And there’s a reason for that, isn’t there.

“I know Sans is hiding something from me,” Frisk gestures slowly, almost…reluctantly? “And I can tell...” They trail off, then sigh and finish, meeting your eyes. “I can tell you don’t know what it is, either.”

You sigh, lips quirking wryly.

“It’s true,” you answer truthfully. “I don’t.” Then you smirk for real. “Lips can’t be loose if you don’t have any.”

Frisk huffs in surprised amusement, then grows somber. “What I don’t understand is why you both seem to think that… if you love someone who’s suicidal, you’re just supposed to let them kill themselves? How is that the right thing to do?”

“I don’t think that’s what this is,” you gesture slow and careful.

“It seems pretty obvious that it is,” they shoot back quickly. “I don’t know what else you would call it.”

“What if you’re wrong, and it actually _is_ more complicated than that?”

Frisk’s face hardens. “And what if I’m _right_?”

You’re suddenly flooded with the certainty that this conversation is extremely dangerous….like one wrong word could blow everything up. Literally. You don’t know why, but once again you decide to trust your instincts and push your burbling fear way down inside where no one can see it.

Shove it away, bury it deep in a dark blue cloud until even you can’t see it anymore.

Your smile gives away absolutely nothing.

“We’re having the same argument we’ve been having since we met,” you lie easily, let your grin slide into self-deprecating. “I guess that’s what happens when an ethicist and a demigod walk into a bar, huh? We need to find some better hobbies.”

That makes them laugh. You feel relieved.

***

It’s nighttime when Sans shows up again, but you’re not tired considering you slept half the day. You’re still in pain and it sucks, but you’re not anywhere near as bad as earlier. He lets you know that Ange is home and asleep, as are the kids.

“wanna head over to my place?” he asks, sitting on the bed next to you with a little grunt and petting your hair. “change a scenery, maybe?” You do, so you do.

When you and Sans walk into the living room, you both sort of just slow-shuffle to a stop.

Um.

Papyrus is sitting with his knobbly knees tented up on the floor, playing a projected game.

Well, to be specific, he’s on level 722 of Tubes and Cubes, which beats MK’s record of level 389 by a significant margin, and the cubes are sliding through or around the tubes in pattens so complex it’s basically like some kind of mildly terrifying, endless fractal. Or at least that’s how it looks to you. There’s no strain visible on his skull, but he’s got that oddly impassive look he gets when he’s...when he feels…

“you doing okay there, boss?” Sans asks casual and quiet, and Papyrus’s fingers tighten into the matrix so hard he actually _breaks_ it. You didn’t know those were breakable. The cubes go fountaining off of and out of the tubes, and Papyrus just watches the countdown tick away instead of making the proper amount of sacrifices necessary to be able to continue from the point he’s at.

“’m gonna take that as a no,” Sans adds after his eye lights are done flickering.

“DON’T… CALL ME THAT,” Papyrus intones strangely, and you feel the skin on your arms shiver up into gooseflesh. Sans shoots you a look you’re hard pressed to categorize as anything except his version of concerned.

“I’M PERFECTLY FINE AND NOT OUT OF SORTS AT ALL, THANK YOU FOR ASKING. HOW WAS SLACKING OFF AT WORK? GET SOME GOOD NAPS IN?”

Papyrus sets the broken matrix down on the table, its cling particles melting out into a defunct little puddle once he pulls it off of his impossibly long phalanges. Neither of them acknowledge it.

“here n there,” Sans answers, sockets narrowing lazily. “better to quit while you’re a _head_ ,” he adds, skull jutting at the game, “s’long’s nothin’s a _foot_ , right bro?”

Papyrus finally finds a facial expression: teeth slowly parting and sockets narrowing to suspicious slits. “NNNNYES,” he gripes peevishly.

“you can go lie down,” Sans prompts you gently. “get off your feet a while, maybe take some more a those blue ones.” He means the pain pills, and he says it just like you worked all day or something instead of sleeping most of it and in bed for all of it. Because he knows how hard it is just existing when you’re in that kind of pain. Crap. Your eyes prickle a little, but you suck the tears back into their ducts with the macho determination only a glass ego can provide. You love him so, so much. You sigh and nod, and he smiles.

“...hey. you know what i’m in the mood for, paps?”

Papyrus’s posture gets all hunchy at first, then his shoulders lower a bit.

“...WHAT?” he asks hesitantly.

“some a that dino egg stuff.”

“YOU _HATE_ OATMEAL, SANS.”

“hey, maybe i jus’ got a wild hair up my ass, wanna try something a little different.”

“YOU DON’T HAVE EITHER OF THOSE.”

“either of what?”

“HAIR. ASS. STOP TRYING TO CODDLE ME.”

You’re blushing again. This is too fucking familiar. It gets even worse when Sans looks at you with an arched orbital bone, then back at his brother. Then he just turns around and shuffles away into the kitchen. You watch Papyrus get double-hunchy when you both hear Sans kicking the stepstool noisily over to the stove, then the weird mechanical noises that mean he’s using the stove.

Papyrus is wiggling like a cat about to pounce, and his face is doing a weird implodey thing.

You hear a prolonged clicking, then what might be a flame catching. The stepstool gets kicked around and re-ascended.

A very faint whining noise emerges thinly from the crabby, vibrating skeleton hunched on the floor, and then he springs up so abruptly you jump, jostling your poor joints. It takes him maybe three steps on those long legs to make it to the kitchen, hollering all the way.

“YOU’RE GOING TO _BURN IT_ IF YOU DON’T WATCH IT _CAREFULLY,_ SANS, YOU KNOW YOU CAN’T-OH.”

A moment of silence.

“…I DON’T KNOW HOW I FALL FOR THIS EVERY TIME.”

“eh. ’m just good at pulling one over on ya, paps. i got a lot of practice. wanna get the thing down for me?

That’s the exhale of someone who just decided to go with the flow before the flow decides to go them.

“…OKAY.”

You lean up and take your meds, then lie back down and listen. You realize you’re being included in the conversation, since you can understand everything they say. You don’t know if they do it on purpose or not, but either way...it gives you a warm glow somewhere deeper than your body.

“heh,” Sans says quietly into the cauldron. You can tell because it makes a round little echo noise. “’member when i used ta carry you when i was cooking? jus’ like this. we used to look down in here waiting for the water to boil cause you got mad at that book, remember?”

“I’M SURE I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN.”

“a watched pot never boils. that thing.”

“…YES, I REMEMBER. IT’S STILL NOT TRUE.”

“heh. yeah.” He’s quiet for a minute; you hear a soft scraping. After a while he talks some more.

“been thinking about when you were little a lot more… ever since, uh. you know. it’s easier to remember now for some reason.” You hear a rustle, some clicks as he adjusts the stove’s special settings. “you wanna hear bout some of it?” he asks quietly.

Sans would never tell his brother anything that would hurt him. Sans’s childhood is gone for good...but if he tries, he can probably remember Papyrus’s. If he tells him, Papyrus can remember too.

“DO YOU REMEMBER THE BEGINNING?” Papyrus asks hesitantly.

“yeah,” Sans answers after a moment of quiet. Like he had to think about it, and now he does. “you...didn't talk yet, but you were still just as funny as now. always had somethin’ rude ta say.” Papyrus makes a surprised-smug type of noise. “but some folks were worried, cause i was…” a surprised exhale. “i was still in stripes, too. and there wasn’t anyone else, jus’ me n you.”

“I WAS SMALL?”

“jus’ a lil baby,” Sans says softly. “cute as all get out. everyone wanted ta meet you, lined up all the way from our place to Annie’s shop to see what was what.”

“THE GAUNTLET,” Papyrus breathes, and Sans lets out a surprised chuckle.

“yup,” he confirms. The soft scrape of stirring is happening, then a few more mechanical noises and a whoosh. “everyone made sure i knew what ta do, and i did. always took care a you, every day since you were born, and i-” Sans clears his throat. “dunno how i know that, but i do.”

“I GUESS I MISSED A SPOT,” Papyrus caws tightly, then he makes a _really_ odd sound. You hear weird, fidgety rasping, too, and the next sentence is downright strangled.

“SANS, I… AM I? _YOURS_?”

A beat of silence, then Sans lets out a surprised squawk you’ve never heard before.

“… _what_? _course_ not! paps… we’re brothers, you know that. always have been.” He huffs a little; you hear his slippers shuffle in the ensuing silence.

“i can’t have kids, pap,” he adds quietly after a minute.

“…OH.”

“but...mm. i think a lot of folks were wonderin that too, and…i think maybe some of em still do,” Sans says slowly.

“Oh,” Papyrus says, so quietly you jump, jostling your joints again. “I’m…sorry.” His voice is like a ghost.

“...hey. s’okay, bro.”

You scowl to yourself, mind frantically trying to work through what you just heard. You have no fucking idea, but then...ohhh. Oh shit.

If someone Sans’s age showed up out of nowhere with a baby…insisting on taking care of it himself because he had since he was born, and...oh shit. No wonder everyone had been so concerned, even though monsters don’t do that sort of thing, certainly not to other monsters, and definitely not to children, for fucks sake. Not the ones that aren’t skeletons, at least. But things like that had happened in monsters’ living memory. You don’t know how many monsters are as old as Lola and Grillby, the ones who remember the war and maybe even from before that. Grillby knew what he’d seen in Sans’s soul. He recognized it.

You feel a little dizzy for a moment.

Lola had told you she and Sans were both wounded...in the same way.

The people in Snowdin had been wrong about Papyrus, but they’d been right about Sans.

And apparently Sans just figured out a way to tell Papyrus what had happened to him without making him _remember_ it.

He really is smart when it counts.

You hear a quick rasp of bone on bone, and the atmosphere gets a lot less tense.

The way Sans exhales makes you able to hear his smile returning. “but they made sure we had what we needed. i got us there in one piece, loaded down with g and crackin’ jokes the whole way, you screechin’ it up til the windows were rattling in hotland.”

“DID YOU SPEND IT ALL AT GRILLBY’S?” Papyrus says a little derisively, and Sans goes quiet for several seconds. “I MEAN-”

“grillbz didn’t live there yet,” Sans says slowly, as if he’s just now realizing that. “him an lola didn’t come ta snowdin til me and you were all grown up, a _lot_ later on.”

“I...SUPPOSE THAT’S OBVIOUS, NOW THAT I...UM.”

“geez, paps,” Sans whispers, sounding really...embarrassed? You have no idea why, unless...oh. Ohhhh. The sexual taboo Grillby had explained, the one about relative ages and hometowns. A certain category of adult who’d known you in stripes is barred from becoming romantically or sexually involved with you; after that it gets even more complicated, having to do with who you were born after, and the relative ages of people in between that both prospective partners are acquainted with. So if Grillby had been living in Snowdin then, he and Sans’s relationship wouldn’t be sexual. And apparently Papyrus knowing that it is and making even such a roundabout allusion to it is enough to make them both uncomfortable. Wow.

“hey papy.”

“WHAT?”

“what’s the difference tween you an what’s in this pot?”

Papyrus sighs heavily enough that you know he’s delighted. “ _WHAT_ , SANS?”

“one’s my little brother...” Sans sets up, voice quivering with anticipation, “...and one’s a little _brothy-er_.”

Sans’s laugh as Papyrus bellow-groans is high and light, if not carefree.

“THIS ISN’T EVEN SOUP, SANS. IT’S _OATMEAL_ ,” he whines beseechingly.

“yup,” he answers succinctly, and you hear a click-clank noise. “and it’s done now, so bottoms up!”

What follows is the sound it makes when Papyrus drinks a boiling cauldron of oatmeal with little crunchy sugar dinosaurs in it, followed by the prompt return of the brothers to the living room. Sans just plops down on the couch perpendicular to where you’re laying, and Papyrus folds himself up and becomes slowly horizontal somehow until he fits on the couch, then lays his skull in his brother’s lap with a heavy sigh. Sans frowns down at him, wipes something off his teeth with his sleeve and his expression clears. Neither of them acknowledge that, either.

“you wanna put on your stories?” Sans asks after a minute or two.

“…NO.”

“you wanna go upstairs or stay here?”

“THIS IS FINE.”

Sans looks up at you. “hey babe. could you do me a real big favor?”

“Sure.”

“go on up to paps’s room, grab fluffy bunny. ‘s up on the second shelf, third from the left.”

“YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THAT.”

“hey now. you gonna tell me i can’t appreciate literature for its own sake?”

You’re already getting up anyhow, and Papyrus looks uncharacteristically sheepish. He doesn’t argue further. You make your groany, painful way upstairs and find the book in his room without incident; at first glance it _seems_ like a pretty typical childrens’ book, big and square with a bright, multicolored cover. The illustration on the front is interesting, but it’s unexpectedly...abstract. It’s hard to say exactly what’s going on with the shapes and lines; you open it and flip through a few pages, and there are even more vague figures along with some vertical lines of writing in a language you don’t recognize. You’re not even sure how you know it’s writing...since it seems like you, um….it’s _inside_ your eyes? Actually...some of the pages...unfold? Open? Or, um...they’re...

This isn’t paper. Or plastic.

Okay, yeah. You don’t know _what_ this thing is.

Sans thanks you for it softly when you return with it, then opens it up and sets it on the femur not occupied by his brother’s skull.

Then he starts talking, and you’re pretty sure whatever story he’s telling isn’t whatever’s in the book you just retrieved. It seems like some kind of fairy tale, filled with insurmountable tasks that somehow get completed, unexpectedly complex characters that make choices you never could have anticipated, and the ending...well. You don’t understand _that_ at all.

“Sans?”

“yeah?”

“Did you find that book in the dump?”

He meets your eyes for a long, drawn out moment.

“...nope.”

You taste your own heartbeat for a second, then swallow it down. There’s really only one other place that Sans ever... _finds_ things. Things that he didn’t already know were there. Sans just smiles softly and starts...reading...again. You calm down, then look at Papyrus to see if he’s….oh.

Papyrus is looking at you with an oddly gentle expression. You make contact with sockets, and he lifts an arm hesitantly in invitation.

You feel a little flutter in your chest; when you’re having a hard time, the best distraction is seeking out the nearest person who might need help, might need something you can provide.

Someone who has a problem you can actually fix, especially when you can’t fix your own.

You get up with a muffled noise of pain, make your way to the couch and lie down next to Papyrus. He already stuffed a pillow in his armpit, since he’s a lot taller than you and Sans’s lap is already extremely occupied with skulls and books. You manage to get yourself settled as best you can finally with a tight sigh, and a soft-sleeved bone arm drapes over you carefully. You already feel those good healing vibes resonating through you, and apparently Sans has his calm ones cranked up to eleven somehow.

You think about the look on Frisk’s face when you told them your sister was fucking their mom. In _half_ , if you recall correctly. Geez, you really are a total shithead when you’re in pain, aren’t you.

You snicker softly to yourself, trying not to joggle anyone.

Then, of course, you feel sorry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sidefic Chapter: The Gauntlet of Deadly Terror  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/17952167/chapters/45452674  
> Two strange children arrive in Snowdin. The townspeople investigate.


	63. just us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [I got patience ](https://youtu.be/CLxSn0m-VTs)  
> On my neck like a cold, cold knife  
> 

“We should have gone to Grillby’s.”

You, Sans, and Toriel all blink or flicker in surprise, then you start laughing at the same time, too. Angie goggles at you, then joins in, finally starting to ignore the people staring at the unheard-of monster who looks like a living skeleton and literal queen of all monsters or whatever. On a dinner date. With two humans.

It’s been a weird, awkward, starey time at the fancy human restaurant that claims expertise in “pure-magic monster cuisine”. Which is super funny since half the time actual monsters are just eating literal garbage. And it’s fuckin tasty, too.

This is a lot farther out from Ebott than any of you usually go, and Sans had had to shortcut you one at a time to get there. For you and Sans, this really isn’t your scene, but you’ve made an exception for these two. Who’ve spent the night either making puns that don’t even make sense, or blushing and freezing every time a white-furred arm touches hers.

“Let me tell you, sis,” you start, letting your grin go sharp, “if I’d known you you were going to strongarm me into a _wooden chair_ dinner date just to watch you choke, I’d have-”

“Shut up,” she hisses, then cuts off when her arm brushes Toriel’s again.

You look at Toriel’s motherly, goaty visage.

Yeah. She’s doing it on purpose. You wink at her.

“...and _boy_ are my arms tired,” you say, and she throws her head back and laughs.

You can tell Sans is having a lot of fun making bets in G with Toriel whether a given morsel of food will manage to be absorbed by his mouth, or just fall right on through the space in his mandible. Although it claims on the menu that every item is entirely magic, Sans’s lap would certainly have to disagree.

The gravy had been especially egregious. That pelvis isn’t getting any kisses until bathtime has come and gone, or come and _come_ as the case may be, which is the part of tonight you’re _really_ looking forwa-

“Who is it?” Toriel says suddenly in her Queen voice.

You look at Sans instead of whatever watery pelvic makeout dreamland you’d drifted off to, and see him open his eyes and pull his hand out of his pocket with a sigh.

“asgore. i gotta take us back.”

“Oh.” Toriel looks downright deflated. “I am sorry, Sans. Is it…?” He shakes his head, and you’ve got no fucking clue what that could be about.

“Is everything okay?” you ask hesitantly.

Sans gives you a smile that’s only slightly flat.

“got called in to work.”

His reply makes Angie relax, and you tense. He takes Angie and Toriel back to Toriel’s place to be reunited with the kids, and when he comes back for you, he looks...tired. You end up having to pay for the whole dinner because the “monster cuisine” restaurant apparently _doesn’t accept G_ (which is what Toriel had left; also what the fuck???), and everyone there is too ignorant to know they should just take it anyways. Well, whatever.

“wanna jus’ go to my place?” he asks quietly. “paps is at tori’s too, gonna stay the night so someone’s there for the kids if they get up to something.”

“Wish we were going to get to get up to something,” you pout, then soften it with a smile. “But at least we get to use his bathroom first, right?” It’s still your favorite, although yours is perfectly fine. Papyrus’s bathroom is just so...floofy, big and well-stocked. “You can’t work with a gravy crotch, right?” you finish hopefully.

“heh...yeah, okay.” You go into the men’s room together since it’s the only one that’s empty (you haven’t seen one of those in a while; you’re starting to think this place hasn’t actually ever had a monster here before), and when you’re done feeling like you jumped inside a moving elevator, you open your eyes in his bedroom.

“phew,” he says, then falls backwards into one of his piles without looking. “kinda wore me out ta be honest.”

“What, pouring gravy into your socks?”

“wh-” he looks down, then lifts a leg and frowns at the eggshell yellow splotched with brown. “…eh. whatever. nah, all those ‘cuts, then getting called to...” he exhales, makes a weird expression. You’ve got a feeling you know which job he got called in to, and that he’s really not looking forward to it. “sucks bein a boss monster sometimes; guess the other way sucks sometimes too.”

“What _is_ a boss monster, anyways?” you ask, since it’s a term you’ve heard bandied about, and you’re starting to get the impression it means something specific, not just a kind of modifier. That’s reinforced by some of the materials you’ve read from Alphys, too.

“a kind of monster,” he explains unhelpfully.

“are you a boss monster?”

“think so?” he says carefully. “i mean. hard to say, right?”

You exhale, that’s fair enough. What even are skeletons.

“How about you give me some examples. Who do I know that’s a boss monster?”

He frowns. “like uh. tori n asgore… undyne, al. even mettaton. gerson.”

This isn’t helping.

“Who’s _not_ a boss monster?” you try instead.

“um. aaron, froggit, tsundereplane… uh… temmie…”

Ohh. You might be starting to get it.

“What’s the difference?” You know about the boss monster’s souls ‘persisting’ briefly from Alphys’s information, but other than that…

“mm.” he glances at you softly; he knows you’re helping him procrastinate. “you wanna have this talk in paps’ tub?”

“Yeah,” you exhale fervently.

Sans shortcuts you both to the bathroom, and he takes his time undressing you how he likes to do sometimes. He takes off his own clothes and puts them in the laundry bag hanging on the back of the door. Papyrus’s bathroom has its perks, but it also has rules even Sans hesitates to break. Gravy clothes on the floor would probably be pushing his luck. You can see the gravy not only clung to his pelvis and cervical vertebrae, but is visible in a few spots on his ribcage and spattered on his legs, too.

“On second thought,” you say slowly, “maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t go to Grillby’s. I’m not sure the Dogs would have let you out of there in one piece,” you comment, giggling madly.

“not when i got you here to lick me clean instead.” He bends over to grab some soap from the baskets tucked to the side of the vanity, and you check out the wavy-dark not-shadows that tremble densely in his pelvic inlet. He turns around and sees you looking, too. “like what you see?” he flirts with an oddly sad little smile.

“Yeah,” you say, and you can see the magic shimmer across his forehead like it does every time. But his face is strange-soft and he seems quieter, more vague than usual. He turns around and lifts something out of the cupboard to show you with a wink; you’re delighted to see it’s one of Toriel’s huge towels.

He knows just what you like, and you add the apple bubbles that he likes. They’re the kind for little kids that turn the water bright green, and sometimes his finger and toe tips if he stays in too long.

There are eight gallons of it under Papyrus’s bathroom sink.

“So, I know it’s not polite to say this, but with boss monsters there’s just one, right?” you ask after you’ve both eased into the water, hot enough to test human limits. Just how you like it. “Otherwise there’s… more.”

He sighs and shakes his head at you, blinks thoughtfully. Your limbs pulsate with delicious heat; you ease back a little and shudder sloshily at the deep, slow temperature shift.

“when you say they’re separate, s’like...you’re saying they can’t go back in. like...um...they’re not part of us, not a person. s’rude.”

“Oh,” you say quietly. Well. That’s kind of serious. Kind of like telling someone they’re going to hell, maybe? You think about how that connects with the information Alphys gave you. “Those kind of monsters...they don’t persist at all, right? They just go back right away.”

He nods seriously.

“But monsters who are individuals-”

He looks confused.

“Boss monsters.”

It clears.

“They take a few seconds or whatever to sort of...reincorporate. They persist, and it makes them...vulnerable?”

He nods again, but he looks a little conflicted as he brushes gravy out of his partially fused talus-tibia space, the part that looks like a little smile. “it’s more complicated than that, and it definitely doesn’t _always_ happen. it jus’ can.” He frowns. “i think. al’s the one you wanna be askin most of this stuff. she knows how it all works.”

You smile at him gently. “You’re better at listening to questions and...breathing occasionally… than Alphys once she gets going. I need a primer.” You wink, and a ghost of iridescence gleams on his face before it disappears. “She knows how it works… but you’re a little better at helping me understand what it means to people.”

He looks extremely dubious.

“Not by explaining it, necessarily,” you add with a grin. “How you react.”

Now _that_ he obviously gets, and eyes you with something between suspicion and admiration. It’s a pretty fun combo.

You help each other get clean, although the stuff you poured in the tub makes a lot of the scrubbing he usually has to do unnecessary, and you can just rub the soap in the creases and call it good. That’s why he likes it, you think. Cleans in a lazy way, makes it less work. You shoot the shit some more, laugh about Angie’s weird “on a date” face, complain about a construction thing happening at the college that’s loud in the day, when you both often take naps.

Then he looks down at the water and gets still; you know why. It’s time to rinse, and he doesn’t want to.

“aaron killed somebody and didn’t die from it,” Sans says bluntly. “i gotta go...do my thing.”

Oh. Oh shit.

“Oh shit,” you say, and Sans nods. “Monsters die from killing?”

“not always,” he says wryly. “obviously.”

“Is it like what you did with Frisk?”

He glances over at you to get more information, then shakes his head. “frisk’s a lil complicated, but still human. aaron’s a monster.” He looks really unhappy, studies the wall in discomfort. “thing is...when aaron has a problem, they all do.”

“what’s the...problem, in this case?”

He sighs again, but answers eventually. “gotta make up for it fore they can go back in.”

“Um...what?” you ask weakly.

“when, uh.” He rubs a hand over his face, making the slish-rasp noise of wet bone. “...fuck,” he whispers.

“It’s okay…” you try to sound reassuring but your voice sounds small, even with the dull echo of the bathroom behind it. Papyrus’s frilly curtains absorb some of it, too.

“do too much bad shit and you can’t go back in,” he just says finally. “you just… i dunno.”

Ohhh.

“Like...Flowey?”

“maybe,” he exhales. “hard ta say.”

“Does what you do make them able to do that? You make them pay for-”

“no, no…” he says softly, frowning over at you. Sloshes around to face you again and puts his hard, hot hands on your thighs, rubs them up and down. It’s actually reassuring because...he’s being kind of weird.

“what i do s’like a...” he exhales wryly. “diagnostic. not a punishment. not...forgiveness.”

“I don’t understand...like. At all,” you admit.

He looks sad, but not tense.

He meets your eyes, then lifts his wet hands to speak the sign language you don’t know as his face gets...sadder. Heavier.

“I don’t like doing this. I don’t want to stand across from someone I know and watch them tear themselves apart, then decide to touch my magic and dust right there on the floor.”

Your hands creep up and cover your mouth. Oh...shit.

“A monster like Aaron will do that rather than prevent the...” He shuts his sockets and takes a deep breath. “… the reuniting of any other aspect of himself. Balance is achieved this way, according to them. All monsters are different, except for the ones who aren’t. You probably noticed that.”

This sucks.

“What I do makes someone understand exactly how they have harmed others with their actions, and helps them understand what they need to do in order to balance that out. Learning this is neither simple, nor is it painless.”

For a minute, he looks his age.

“Some cannot,” he finishes with two simple gestures, then you feel his hands on your legs under the water again as a fat bead of magic wells up in the corner of his socket. He doesn’t acknowledge it, but he hangs his skull and just...cries and rubs your legs for while.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper after a little while.

He squeezes your legs under the water, then brings them back up, looks at you squarely with that same heavy-serene-sad expression.

“I’m not.” He looks away, then almost seems himself for a moment.

“’s how i met grillbz,” he says aloud, a deep burr of emotion in his voice. “came ta ask for justice, long…” his breath catches. “long time ago.”

Your mouth falls open. How he met...he... _Grillby_ , who killed 213 humans. In one day. To defend himself from being killed in turn...presumably by whatever means had also killed every other fire elemental that had existed then. You certainly hadn’t fucking asked. Sans watches your face journey with a gentle look, then continues.

“Some monsters believe that what I do…informs my personal emotions and decisions.”

He tilts his head softly, smiles slow and serene. His fingers form the words gracefully, little shards of water glinting as they flick and fall.

“It does,” he smiles, fingers fanning out one by one as he speaks in proper case. “He suspected others, maybe even children were in the wagon, and didn’t care when it mattered the most. He burned the soldiers to stop them from killing him; he burned everything else because he was angry, and wanted to hurt and destroy.”

You see the love in his face.

“I chose Grillby to share my soul with first because he is a murderer.”

His eye lights flicker as you take a hand off your mouth, wave it at him almost blindly, grab both of his and dunk them back in the tub.

Holy fucking shit. Nope. You’re done, you’re fucking done. You tap out.

“Whatever this is makes you _super_ _fucking_ _weird_ ,” you whisper behind your other hand, shivering heavily as you let smooth, wet bones slide out of your grip.

He smiles sadly, lets a tear fall into the mound of bubbles in front of him. He slaps the top of the mound and watches the bubbles poof up silently, then lifts his hands again. Glances at you hesitantly before speaking, then continues at your grudging nod.

“I know. My brother feels the same way about Judgement. He decided to spent the night at Toriel’s for more than one reason,” he says, flicking a bit of fluffy suds off his thumb. He glances away, then back at you with love still softening his unusually… grave… expression. It’s very unnerving. “You don’t have to stay, either,” he adds, but you’re already shaking your head.

“Of course I’m _staying_ with you,” you scoff softly. “We made plans, and I’m not going to let a little...um...” You just leave that sentence there to die. Not sure where you were going with that.

A little sparkle of humor comes back into his face.

“wanna make like lola an hose off some dirty bones?” he asks. You snort. Blasting each other with the shower attachment while the tub drains makes you feel a little better, and Toriel’s towel helps too. You go back to your room instead of his, and he rummages around in the closet for the basket of his clothes he keeps in there. He takes almost a half hour to find his other sock, and he stays weird until he finally puts his hoodie on and closes the door to your bedroom behind him.

“see ya soon,” he says softly, and you feel like the words happen after the door’s already shut.

You take your viewer out to catch up on one of your serials while you wait for him to come back, but you can’t really think about much except what he’d said about monster souls and doing bad things. You get the impression that the kind of stuff that he means has to do with causing harm to other people, rather than any list of do’s and don’ts, but killing someone’s probably not good.

You give up on trying to do much of anything, and just pull a big bag of candy out of the couch cushions and eat some of it absently while you ponder the meaning of souls. The candy’s the fourth batch of spicy peanut butter and jelly balls you’ve made since gyftmas, and they’re all smashed and crushed up from your butts and sleeping on them. You and Sans play a little game called “candy horoscope” where you tell each others’ fortune based on the mashed up shape of whatever piece of candy shrapnel you pull out of the bag.

His little ankle-smile where the bones are fused.

The round little clothes basket in your closet full of shorts and socks.

Playing candy horoscope when one of you had a bad dream.

A peppercorn tingle that blooms deeper than taste.

His stain-green bubble bath with the tangy apple scent.

The sound of breath hitching in a throat that doesn’t exist.

Which one will you forget first? Or does it just happen all at once?

For all the procrastination, Sans is back after only about 25 minutes. He opens the door, shuffle-plods over to the couch with his arms dangling instead of in his pockets, and flops facedown next to you. He exhales hard and shivers, then wiggles in even closer to you. You pet his head idly, waiting for him to loosen a little more. Once he does, you ask.

“Can Aaron go back in?” you whisper.

Sans exhales heavily, then nods, relieved. “decided to touch it, but he made it. gotta make up for it, but...that’s jus’ life, right?”

Eventually he rolls to his side, lifts his chin and parts his teeth to be fed smashed candy mess. You obligingly smush some in the narrow gap, and he seems content to lie here and be fed for the foreseeable future. It’s nighttime, but you slept way late in preparation for the double date, and you’re not tired at all.

“Did Grillby really kill children?” you ask after a little bit.

“...yeah,” Sans says softly. “he’s sorry for what he did, and he’s making up for it.” he sighs. “but...he was already doing that long time before i met him. started...” he exhales shakily. “started before the barrier, when it was harder. and he had no way to know it wouldn’t be like that the whole time.”

“What do you mean?”

Sans exhales, frowning. Then it clears. “his place,” he explains. “those drinks he makes.” His face goes a little wobbly. “me and lola,” he adds quietly. “he’s making up for it, has been his whole life. he was a teen when he killed those humans, what we call ‘big stripes’ in snowdin. still a kid. he was gonna do somethin’ else before...the war. even lola won’t tell me what, an’ i don’t know how _they_ met, either. it’s real hard for someone like him to stay put like he does, and it’s a lotta work to _do_ what he does besides.”

Sans turns his skull and meets your eyes for a long moment, soft and adamant still but in a more normal way than before. His hands stay quiet for now. “everything he does, every day is ta make up for what he did. he’s been helping people his whole life cause he regrets what he did, wants to make it right. he’d take it back if he could, and every second he’s alive he keeps that in mind.”

Well.

You might as well ask.

“What about Asgore?”

Sans’s face gets hard, and he looks at nothing in particular.

“boss monsters live until someone kills us,” he says flatly, “til we get tired, or til third gen.” He glances at you, sees you don’t know what that is. “til our kid’s kid has a kid and grows up.” Then he huffs a little. “well. dunno if that’s how i work on that last part, but kids is what ages monsters’ bodies, not time. got from undyne that gerson had a third gen in stripes when the war came, lost em all. he’s been that age since before asgore was born.”

“That’s fucking grim,” you comment weakly.

“ _everything_ we do matters, he says. “makes me tired, and i’m just as bad at forgetting that as anyone.” He huffs out his breath.

“asgore’s never going back,” he says softly. “he knew that as soon as he said he was gonna kill humans that fell, and he meant it. s’more complicated cause he’s a king, and…he’s still a king. he makes certain decisions, we still all gotta abide by ‘em. he _does_ certain things, and it affects all of us.”

His face gets still.

“and if enough monsters want something, he has to do it.” He glances at you. “not like up here. not about telling people what to do, naming things and sorting, it’s...he feels it. that feeling tells him what monsters want, and he makes a decision based on that.”

“Is Toriel like that, too?”

He nods.

“no one’s ever gonna have a kid with asgore now, and he’s real hard to kill. he can’t get tired cause he’s a king, and he can’t go back cause he murdered six tiny little kids in cold blood, took their souls and kept em from going where they needed to. so...he’s really only got one option.”

Sans sits up, leans back low against the cushion and turns his head towards you. Your legs are tucked into the space between his spine and the angle of the couch.

“…me.”

He sighs heavily, and does something he hasn’t done around you in almost two years.

He makes a nonspecific and vaguely humerus bone appear out of nothing and into his left hand. It’s about five inches long, and he holds it between his middle fingertip and thumb.

“you checked me. you know my at. that’s how much damage this does if it hits you real hard, if i want it to hurt, or if i’m being careless...like...elbowin’ someone when you’re talking real excited. that’s what happens if you’re a _monster_ , at least, and you didn’t come to me for the same reason aaron did.”

He looks at the bone in his hand with an unusually serious expression on his face, just as strange and somber as he has been all night.

“monsters that did something bad enough they can’t go back no matter what dust for good after a few a these.”

His eye lights move over something you can’t see as he turns the little bone in his hand, this way and that. You pick up the faintest hint of yellow iridescence on it as he moves it idly. You know this look, too. He’s thinking about telling you something. Deciding.

“bout thirty-five, forty percent a humans die on the spot if they touch this,” he informs you casually, and you goggle at him. Then you goggle a little more, because he’d just _left one of those_ on the table while you ate breakfast together after the first night you’d ever spent at his house.

You turn your gaze on him...not accusingly, but…

“wasn’t really in the best headspace then… but if you’d touched it guess i’d know a lot more about you real quick,” he admits, getting a little iridescent. “what frisk does...makes me feel some kind of way,” he whispers. He doesn’t apologize.

“For fuck's sake, Sans,” you add.

He tucks the bone in his pocket, then just glances sidelong at you for a while until you blush.

Yeah, okay. You could kill him pretty easily too.

“I never tried to, though,” you protest.

The look that crosses his face when you do is… extremely unexpected.

“Sans?”

He keeps on staring, sockets getting rounder by the second.

“oh… _shit_ ,” he whispers, and you feel cold all over. “you _didn’t_ know.”

“Know what?” Your breathing goes fast and shallow.

His phalanges rattle across his grin, and you feel dizzy.

“What did I do, Sans?” you ask weakly.

“was sure you knew what you did.” he pants shallow, looking confused. “you looked like you did...didn’t...have to _tell_ you, i thought…and every time we-”

He rubs his face rapidly, then his hand reemerges from his pocket, holding the bone. He turns to face you, holds it out.

“touch it,” he whispers.

You blink, then reach out and do just that.

A few drops of blood run out of your nose, soak into your lap. The bone disappears, and Sans rubs his hands over his face again, sobs dryly.

“you don’t know what you did,” he rasps. “you feel pretty bad bout it anyhow, but you _don’t know_.”

“Sans,” you say again, but he shakes his head and hides his face, so you give him a minute.

“never been wrong about it before,” he whispers miserably.

“okay,” he pants after a little while. “gotta tell you a certain way.”

“O...kay?” you say, feeling extraordinarily confused, anxious, and more than a little afraid.

He takes his hands away from his face, turns towards you, then touches your chest and his lightly at the same time. “gotta tell you like this. that okay with you?”

You swallow dryly, but you nod.

You gasp because he pulls right away, and you both float out to face the music.

“’s gonna hurt a lil bit, but i think you’ll be...you’ll be glad you did it like this,” he whispers, meets your eyes squarely. “otherwise...we might not be able to touch each other anymore.”

You search yourself; whatever you did, you want to know. And if there are consequences, you’re ready. You give him your hands.

“’m sorry i didn’t figure it out sooner,” he says, and it’s one of the truest things he’s ever said to you. Then he curves your fingers, touching you all at once except...his…

you’re (not) touching his soul, and—

you’re touching (his soul) ...his…

his…

J u S t I c e

dictates

that you

understand what you have done and as it turns out

you do not. Understand

what you did.

You walk up unsteadily towards your own broken body at the foot of the scree slope. Shaking hands reach out, you feel

.9547382993

like you need to help, but

.84873247520

you can’t, and you can’t _not_ help because

.73448723582

you can’t

.67324872659

you can’t

.53487658274

You can’t. Just. Watch. Them. Die.

.48374982374

But they _won’t let you_ , and you can’t---

.37449324432

Then finally you can, and you grab them as quickly as you

.09847384534

“Sans! You must-” Toriel’s panicked voice disappears, and you stumble heavily into the shelves of glassware behind the bar; Grillby reaches back without looking and grabs the bottle. He makes it to you before you Fall, but just barely.

Glass clinks rough against your teeth, he rushes into your body and you-

...make it.

...barely.

You blink dazedly, sitting across from the skeleton you nearly killed by nearly killing yourself.

Oops.

Turns out all your choices matter.

Don’t they.

And so does this one.

Sans gasps, yanks your fingers out of his soul but not before this thread burns into being, infinite and simultaneously

NOW

in this world, at least.

Because it’s not there _now_ ; it was _always_ there. He groans and sways dizzily as it hits him all at once; it can’t be helped because it was always going to have happened.

You both slip back where you go.

It was _always_ there, and he felt it.

Your promise.

That you just swore on his soul.


	64. [both[until[a [the promise is]candle lit] you] end]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Smiths – How Soon Is Now?  
> https://youtu.be/4PIi1LWkfDE

 

The promise that was already there.

 

_Fifteen months ago Sans shuts his sockets and shudders, exhales slowly._

_He’s giving you the key to the basement under his old house in Snowdin for the first time._

“ _if i don’t come back, just leave. won’t matter anymore.”_

“ _Why...how am I supposed to know...”_

_You don’t even know what you’re asking, but he apparently does since his eyes are open again._

_He’s staring at your chest._

“ _sorry,” he whispers. “sorry. you’ll know.”_

_You feel like you can’t catch your breath._

 

It was always there, and _he felt it_.

“why did you do it?” he groans, collapsing against your chest, falling loose into your open arms. “how…?”

Always open for him; forever. Until the day you die. You’re going to take care of him, and you’re going to let him give you what you need. A promise: a reckless, terrible, unbreakable promise.

(He’s staring at your chest.)

Well. You _can_ break it.

(You feel like you can’t catch your breath.)

But you’ll both know if you do.

(“sorry,” he whispers. “sorry. you’ll know.”)

“shoulda known this is when you’d do it,” he whispers, and you hold him tight then pull him up so you can get at his cervical vertebrae with your tongue, lips, even your teeth. His shaking hands roam you frantically, like he’s trying to hold you everywhere at once. He moans helplessly; you both feel what you did. You’re going to feel it...for the foreseeable future, which is who knows how long.

Same as your life, or until everything ends. No one knows how long they have left; you might have a better idea than most, but you still don’t _know_.

There’s only one thing you know for sure, and that’s that you made a promise that stretches from the moment you were born to the day you die, whether you go wherever human souls go (where Sans goes), or you decide to stay and become part of this cycle for a while (where Sans goes).

To find him.

To remember.

To take care of him, to love him, to let him love and take care of you.

“’m sorry,” he sobs against your mouth, suppressing a shiver as your hands slide up his shirt, over his ribcage to feel what you’ve done resonating inside him. “thought i could stop it. ‘m sorry,” he hisses, and you feel a rush of heat from his pelvis even before he touches it to your leg.

“You can’t stop it,” you whisper hot into tepid bone, “unless you stop wanting me to.”

“i _can’t_ ,” he keens softly, then his voice roughens. “i _want_ you to…oh, _fuck_. i _want_ you.”

“ _Please_ fuck me,” you say harshly as the armrest of the couch appears against your back. He already knows you want everything he does and more, he can’t ever _not_ know again.

He can’t ever not know that you love him.

His face grinds hard into your shoulder as he crushes you to his chest; his wordless voice cracks with desire as his hard-smooth fingers scrabble at your waistband, loosely claw your bottoms down and off. He palms your ass, pulls your hips forward and rolls his skull up until his face is pressed to yours, panting hungrily. You grunt and arch into his touch as his palm slides between your legs.

His breath goes ragged against your soft cheek as your slickness coats smooth bone. “how d’you want me? hands, or something else?”

“I want anything you’ve got for me,” you grunt eagerly into thrumming bone as your hands finally make their way inside his shirt. “I want _you_.” Neither of you know exactly how his body works, but there’s no way to disappoint you. Everything he is, you want.

His other hand darts down to rummage in his shorts to see what might be there, and his pleased little moan makes you quake with desire, gushing into his palm. A thin phalanx dips at your opening, waggles sloppily back and forth so you can both hear how wet you are; he curses softly into your neck. “think it can go in there,” he pants, “if you want, i-”

“Yep,” you interrupt, pulling him up against you.

“you got it,” he groans desperately. You’re wet and ready; he doesn’t even bother taking his shorts off, just yanks them down and presses his trembling bones against your heated flesh, turns his face up to yours to be kissed with a shuddering exhale. You oblige frantically as he moves your legs apart and kneels between them; you grab the back of his shirt and pull him down onto you, gather it up and grip tight so it doesn’t slip down between you in front as he pants with ragged haste.

“stars _above_ ,” he quivers out thinly; you can feel his hand shaking as he guides hot, resonant magic to your entrance, already pressing inside with a whimper. “c-can i, _please_ , i can’t-” he cuts off with a choked moan of relief as you reach down for his pelvis with your other hand and pull him towards you. You can’t wait either. You let shaky cries out against each other’s faces as he fills you neatly; it fits a lot easier than some. You scramble to get arms around each other and hug tight. He pulls back a little and you both moan aloud, shiver with the thrill of it.

“i don’t know what’s gonna happen,” he breathes urgently, already moving in a way that pleasures you both. You and he are getting a better idea of how you like this, even if he’s different every time. Always learning, always figuring it out.

For as long as you have left.

“what you did, it...what if it gets out to the rest of em?” he continues between soft little grunts; he means other timelines. “it was _already there_ ,” he moans. “what if i don’t even exist then? you think a that?”

“You exist everywhen,” you argue relentlessly.

“you can’t _know_ that,” he groans desperately, petting your face and hair, nudging his forehead against you insistently. His voice quivers up through his panting breaths as he adjusts to get deeper inside you. “what if it hurts you?”

“You have a pet _black hole_ , Sans,” you counter as he groans again, this time wordlessly as you move your hips in a tight circle. Whatever this is, you’re both enjoying the shape and the freedom of movement it’s allowing you both. It’s a little fat, but fits easily because it’s kind of...squishy? He doesn’t seem to be having any trouble penetrating you with it despite that, so you’re not worried about it. A bone arm slides around you, the joint of his elbow cradling the back of your neck, supporting you as you relax into his unyielding embrace. He traces your face gently with his nasal bone, making you shiver with delight until he finds words again.

“i _know_ ’m too reckless,” he gasps, pushing into your body so carefully it makes him seem like a liar, but you know he’s telling the truth. You can feel him trembling for control, but control isn’t really what you want from him right now. “but you’re the only person i ever met more reckless than me.”

“I just pick my moments,” you pant softly, then shove yourself up roughly to be filled with hot, tingling magic, then do it again insistently. It tears a choked cry out of him; he lifts his chin as his other hand grips your ass and yanks you forward onto him, then he kneels up to give it to you double time, much to your delight.

“holy _shit_ ,” he whispers when he hears the low, dangerous sound you make, and he fucks you faster. “h-how do you feel so good?” he gasps. “can barely stand it...”

“it’s mutual,” you groan, then tug at cloth. “we should take these off...”

“don’t wanna stop that long,” he admits tightly. “s’like…” His breath catches, and he exhales loudly as his pelvis impacts you hard enough you remind you that you have bones in there, too. “don’t think i wanted to come this bad since the first time.”

“I’m glad it’s not that big,” you moan, trying to give him more room to move.

He shakes his head, a sheer layer of magic shedding across his frontal bone. “meant...when i felt you do it the first time. touching you,” he adds shakily, a strange tone rippling across his deep voice. Two lingering eye lights touch your chest significantly, then his sockets slide shut as he shivers out an exquisite little moan. Ohhh. Oh _wow_. Yeah, you remember that. He was begging, said he needed it.

He _screamed_.

“Go ahead,” you growl, gripping the neck of his shirt tight and pulling him close, bending him over you.

He shakes his skull again breathlessly, cracks a socket open to look at you again as he starts to pant. “you first,” he gasps. “’m gonna pull it out when i’m ready, do it t’other way, k?”

Well, that’s fine with you, so you nod. He plants one hand on the armrest and you pull instead of letting go, getting his shirt messily off his upper body after all as he leans up, although it slides down his arm and just hangs out on his wrist. His bones are softly pearlescent and heartbreakingly lovely, his body between them is dark and mysterious, unknowable and familiar. His shorts are still strung tight between his widespread knees, the waistband pinned crookedly underneath one of them and halfway up his femur on the other side. You reach down between your legs to rub yourself, and he follows your fingers with his eye lights. He tilts his skull down until his chin almost touches his chest, a faint whine escaping him as he looks at where he penetrates you.

“can i do it?” he asks, staring as if he likes watching as much as he used to not. You take your hand back and let him know you’re just as happy to lie back and enjoy the ride. The points in his sockets change texture wildly as he watches his magic go inside your body, and he starts rubbing your clit with his thumb.

You bend your legs up, set the arches of your feet gently on his spraddled femurs to give him plenty of room for what he’s doing. Fuck, he’s good at that. Really good, but your eyes dart up to his face when he makes a desperate and oddly _nasal_ sound. He slams his sockets shut with a strangled noise, then shoves himself into you as far as he can and stays there, although his thumb keeps moving while he takes deliberate, slow breaths.

“Are you okay?”

His nod is tiny and repetitive, and he rubs you encouragingly as the crease between his sockets deepens.

“’pparently ‘m not gonna make it if i watch,” he breathes weakly after a moment. “heh,” he tries, but it’s just a breath without anything behind it. He takes his other hand off the armrest and shakes the shirt off it quickly, then brings his hand in to stroke your face until it stops shaking, then down to your belly calm and slow. After a minute or so some of that calm seeps into the rest of him, too. It doesn’t actually take very long before he starts moving inside you again; you give a ragged moan as you realize that his genitalia is apparently _not_ squishy anymore, and you’re a lot closer to coming than you thought.

He whisper-coughs in surprise as you tighten down on him, then lets out a low groan as his bones start impacting you again. He makes another nasal sound, but this one has a little less panic behind it. “… _fuck…_ i don’t wanna stop….” he repeats plaintively, a deep crease appearing between his still-closed sockets. You cry out sharply; he’s going at it hard enough to pant with actual exertion, and his width is more noticeable now.

“ohh, me too...” He’s stroking you encouragingly in a little circle below your navel; it’s really doing something for you. Like he’s aiming for that spot from inside as he fucks into you like a metronome.

‘m so _close_ ,” he grunts between his vocal panting, and you’re holding your breath because yeah, any second now. His hard, smooth fingers spread out over your belly, stroke up and down, letting you feel each and every tiny bone in his hand flex and hold as he pushes a bit, then rubs another little circle that shoves you quivering madly right over the edge.

“can i rub it here?” he gasps, and you end up shouting “Yes,” embarrassingly loud, because now he’s fucking you right through your climax, shifting his thumb to the side, then using his palm right above to get you the rest of the way there without overstimulating, taking the time to draw it out even as his panting turns to frantic sobs.

As soon as his hand slides away, he grabs the armrest again and leans down over you, opens his sockets inches from you with another high, excited noise. “oh _fuck_ ,” he breathes, “look at you.” Bone fingers caress your face, lift your chin slightly as he watches you, his ragged breath making your eyelashes flutter. His thumb caresses your lips, then his hand slides over your shoulder, down your side to your hip.

“i _feel_ you,” he pants wildly. “feel what you did in me.” His hand slides underneath to lift your hips slightly, then he looks down at where he penetrates you with a strangled grunt. One of your feet starts to slide off his leg; he gasps “keep it there?”, eye lights quivering. You do, your legs spread out wide for him.

“i, i jus’...” He looks increasingly astonished, and you yelp in breathless appreciation as he fucks you satisfyingly hard, tactile afterimages of your own orgasm pounding through you along with the wet impact of his pelvis. You realize you’re reaching up above you for leverage, lifting up to meet his thrusts; this is basically gymnastics for you. Wow.

A rush of hot breath exits his nasal cavity as he makes another high, nasal sound, and it’s turning you to jelly as his hand darts down at an unusual angle; you shiver and cry out when fingerbones brush you gently right underneath where he penetrates you, making you notice again how hot and hard his genitalia is now.

“o-oh… _ohhh_ , there we go,” he whispers, broken-tight with hot surprise. The points in his sockets blend out wide as he stares into your eyes, and you feel him pressing two phalanges tight where your bodies meet, like he’s measuring a distance between you there. He rubs the underside hard a few times, then yanks himself out of you and into the expectant cradle of his fingers so abruptly it almost makes you come again.

He shifts with a sharp, short cry, then pushes forward to lean against your body. He’s using his cupped hand to rub hard at the base as he pants against your cheek, and you can feel the backs of his phalanges moving rapidly between your belly and his reformed magic. He’s using his thumb to press the tingling, soft-hot tip into your skin firmly; it’s still wet from your body as he waggles it in quick side-to-side movements. He gasps in a few short breaths without exhaling, then the clacking of bones fill his sudden, shivering silence as his entire body tenses up _hard_.

Then he goes shaky-limp like a shot duck everywhere at once; his skull rolls to plop onto your shoulder like a bowling ball.

“ _ohhhh_ _fu_ _uuuck..._ ”

He chokes off his growling, full voiced holler with a tight hiccup into your neck; you cry out as he nips you there harder than usual, then bites (oh)as he spasms all over. His deep, ragged gasp cools your sweaty-pinched skin, his hard fingers work frantically between your bodies as his spine curves over and over. He starts collapsing before he’s even done, and both of you yell some more as your feet finally slip off his femurs; it goes surprisingly well considering you don’t think either of you are totally in control of your limbs. He growls again breathily this time, scrabbles to hold you tighter as his shaking hand slips away and he pumps bare and tingly-wet against your belly. His breath heaves deep and ragged as he slows, then he just twitches faintly and gasps for air.

He’s harder now than when you started, hot and swollen between you and getting sort of pushed into the space where he doesn’t have a belly as you both try and catch your breath. You start rubbing his shoulderblades with the insides of your wrists once you feel confident your arms will obey you.

“oh… o-oh, shit…you okay?” he asks weakly, and you grunt affirmatively. “me too,” he gasps, trying to breathe a little more normally and failing. “that uh... that. was uh. lot more intense than i ‘spected,” he rushes out, then takes another deep, bracing breath. “didn’t hurt though. uh. surprisingly enough. and, uh. _shit._ sorry i, uh.” His shaky fingers touch the side of your neck with a hiss, and his voice dissolves back into a whisper. “… _shit_. sorry.

“It was kinda hot,” you moan, still shivering with emotion and sensation. You lie there sweating sweat and magic on each other, mutually dazed by the intensity of whatever the fuck _that_ just was and how extremely into it you both were. “Don’t worry about it, okay? It didn’t hurt me.” He exhales loosely, seems like he’s finally starting to catch his breath.

“okay,” he says meekly, and you smile, pet his back a little.

His hand snakes between you again, sort of inside his body then sliding around between. He makes a speculative little grunt as he feels around.

“yeah…it’s better not to take the chance,” he sighs after a minute, takes his hand away. “since ’pparently it makes me bitey, too,” he adds, thick hints of embarrassment in his voice. “sheesh.”

You run over some of what he’d said, and…

“I thought you did it like that because you wanted to,” you say, confused. “You...” you frown. “You didn’t want to?”

“mmm?” he struggles up onto his elbows so he can look at you. “no, i wanted to,” he says with a little shake of his head. “told you, feels real good when i do it.” He gives you a pleased smile as he calms further, then traces your lower lip softly with his nasal bone. “jus’ wasn’t sure how it would go. didn’t wanna hurt you, or get stuck or anything. we never tried that before.”

You look at him blankly for several seconds.

“…Stuck?”

His expression changes slightly, then he kneels up a little to show you what he’s got going on. You can’t see it very well in this light, but he guides your hand carefully underneath, and you feel….oh. Oh god. Um. Is that what you...think it is?

“right there,” he sighs. “happens pretty sudden, i guess.”

You’re glad he’s looking at himself and not you for the two seconds it takes you to process that. But honestly… a living skeleton fucking you with a dog’s dick isn’t even the weirdest thing to happen to you _today_ , so you just sigh it out and grin up at him when he looks at you again.

“s’kinda funny, it’s like… i’m done, but this thing wants to keep goin’,” he says, shaking his head absently and cupping his still-extended genitalia protectively as he shifts around to settle down beside you, lays his skull on your shoulder with a little exhale. “maybe cause...it wants to stay where you put it? goes off like a shot, too. heh. guess i was too...” He turns so iridescent a few beads of magic become not-him across his frontal bone; he trails off but still cuddles into you willingly enough.

“What?” you ask, curious now that he’s all quiet. “What?” He turns his face into your neck, and lets out his weird little yelping giggle he only does when he’s actually, truly embarrassed.

“Now I _have_ to know,” you whisper conspiratorially.

“heh hee _hee_ ,” he smothers against your cooling skin, his teeth still warm enough to give you a nice little shiver. His shoulders shake, and you’re about to let him off the hook when he whispers back.

“k. i’ll tell ya, but you gotta get the blanket. this is an under-the-blanket kinda story, and i’m still sticking out all over the place here.”

Your groan as you heave yourself up is mostly for dramatic effect, but you’re still relieved to see the blankets are piled on the floor beside the couch. You don’t even have to get up. You yank one up and over, revel in the sensation as it practically floats down on top of you both; he giggles more comfortably as the fluffy comforter works its namesake on you both.

You turn to face each other, hands seeking and finding, fingers playing their own games with each other while you talk.

“so...this thing’s sorta like doggo’s cock, right?” he whispers, and you feel his magic shed light where his frontal bone touches your forehead. “this’s smaller, though. that’s uh. relevant.”

A snort escapes before you manage to suppress it completely; oh god. You have a feeling you know where this story’s headed.

“yup,” he whispers. Then you get still; maybe it’s not as funny as you thought, if he-

He meets your eyes quickly, gives his head a little shake. “nah, nobody got hurt. wasn’t funny at the time, but it was pretty soon after. heh.” He smiles, and it’s almost fond. “never told the whole fuckin’ town bout _that_ , did he.” Sans snorts wryly.

“i wasn’t mad or anything, just, uh…concerned. for a lil bit.

“You have to give me the details on this one.”

Iridescence dances across his cheekbones even in the dim as he laughs quietly some more.

“k. but tit for tat.”

You wink; he sighs and gives you his eyeroll impression.

“me n doggo used ta be sentries back in snowdin...took lil breaks now and then. he knew i didn’t have anything like he did, but once he asked if he could try rubbin it on me somewhere, like how. uh. Dogs do to each other sometimes. said it was fine, didn’t make much difference ta me. wasn’t sure what kinda place he’d _want_ to, but…” He chuckles, shakes his skull a little.

He takes your hands and uses them to cover his face a second while he giggles some more, then pulls them down, rubs them across his grin.

“there i am over a log in the woods behind his station, and he’s got a hand down my shorts trying ta find a smooth spot in there to do his thing,” he whispers, shaking with mirth. “he kept my clothes pulled up s’much’s he could and gave me a big hug overtop, even though i told him i don’t feel cold like that, so he didn’t uh. look around as good as he could have? not that he’s good at that anyhow,” he adds, rolling his eyes again, “but he found a spot.” He takes your hand and pulls it around his body to the back, sets your fingers….oh.

“yup.” He winks. “went right through here, so…” It would have rubbed the back of his pubis, sliding on the joint where his magic’s dense and softer than bone. “didn’t know i liked that yet, but it felt pretty ok anyhow?” He looks sheepish enough that you assume that might be an understatement.

“like i said he uh. didn’t look around, jus did it by feel, so. he was being easy, but he slipped off here” he says, indicating his pelvic inlet which is currently filled with the iridescent shadow of his magic, “and it went in _here_ ,” he continues, indicating his obturator foramen, “on accident.” He makes his throat-clearing noise. “kind of a tight fit,” he whispers, eye lights darting away for a moment. Knowing the kind of feelings he likes and how sensitive the bones in his pelvis are (and the magic between them, too), you can imagine how he responded to that.

“think i mighta spent a little when it did. didn’t realize that til now.” Spent magic, he means. “cause i didn’t really, uh, do that back then? but that’s when he got _real_ excited, like when i would, uh...” He makes an evocative and easily understood hand motion.

“Uh oh...”

“that’s what _i_ said,” he snorts, and you both giggle naughtily for a minute. “well, what i said once i realized, at least. think i mighta said something else at the time,” he adds sheepishly, leading to another round of giggles.

“How did you get it out?”

He sighs pathetically. “sat his bare ass in a snowbank til he cooled down, with me there in his lap givin him a different kinda hard time,” and you both crack up. “was worried someone was gonna come by, and i’d have to shortcut us outta there. told ‘im he shoulda warned me he was close cause i knew that could happen; he said i shoulda warned _him_. didn’t know what he meant, thought it mighta been the sound i made or something. but i guess…” He looks and sees that you don’t either. “what Dogs got. if i shed magic on there, he could taste it.”

“Ohhh,” you say. “And that could have...set him off?” you add, glancing at him sidelong.

He looks down at the iridescent, knobby length still radiating heat between his legs, then makes deliberate eye contact with you.

“i’m gonna go with ‘definitely’,” he chuckles. “k. time to pony up,” he prompts.

“I’m not _that_ kinky,” you quip. “no dog and pony show here.”

He just narrows his sockets at you with a tight grin and waits.

“I farted on someone’s chin once,” you say, blushing.

“…wow.”

“Yep.”

“details.”

You look to the side.

“tit for tat,” he insists, so you give them. It’s actually a lot funnier telling the story to someone else, and in the end you’re glad you did. Then you tell him about another mishap to make up the difference between “chin fart” and “dog dick stuck in obturator foramen” and you both laugh even harder. You expend the rest of your mirth with a sigh, then turn thoughtful.

“By most human standards, what you did with Doggo probably counts as sex.”

He looks dismissive. “nah. me an doggo jus’ fooled around. s’like… i dunno. we weren’t young, but i didn’t do that kinda stuff for real until a lot later on.” He smiles vaguely. “didn’t want to. seemed too private when i thought about it, but most of the time i didn’t think about it at all. makes more sense looking back now than it used to.”

“Soul stuff?”

“mm. yeah.”

“Not until Grillby?”

He nods.

“And meeting him made you want to have sex after all?”

He’s shaking his head. “you got it the wrong way round. decided i wanted to, then looked around for someone i might want to do that with.”

“Oh.” you think about that. “Why did you say that before? About picking him because he’s a murderer?”

A ghost of that weird serene-sad expression happens, then it just settles into a vague sort of unhappiness.

“cause i’m messed up,” he whispers eventually. “cause if i did something bad that made me like this…” he shakes his head when you try to interrupt, “…cause a how we met and what happened, i thought he’d treat me how i deserved.”

Well. That can mean a lot of things.

He exhales slowly.

“when i meet someone like that…it’s real bad to say i did. but he jus’...said it right out. he wanted to tell me, talk about it with me.”

“It surprised you?”

“yeah.”

“Why?”

“cause i’m ashamed. thought he would be too.”

“He’s not?”

“nah, he is. real bad.”

“I don’t understand.”

“can’t explain it more,” he says quietly, then touches his sternum very lightly without looking at you directly. “you jus’ have to feel it, and… _i_ can’t show you that.”

Wow. Is he suggesting what you think he is?

“i went with him cause i thought he could handle whatever he found in there, and he did. thing is, when i saw what he did… when he touched my magic in the judgement...thought he was gonna dust right there, but he didn’t. made me think that if you try hard enough to do the right thing, it could count for something.”

“He showed you something good about yourself,” you say after a quiet little minute.

“he’d show you too if you wanted,” Sans adds hesitantly. “i can’t do what he does.”

“There’s not enough time,” you whisper sadly. “It’s almost over, and…” you sigh. “I’m all out of cliffs.”

“told frisk i’d do it over and over til i got it right,” he whispers. “maybe i shouldn’t have said it, but…it’s getting harder to care,” he says, voice cracking. “did you know? that first day we didn’t die, did….did you know??”

“Sort of,” you whisper. “But...not how. I knew you were there because I would love you.”

“how?”

“I just _did_.”

Papyrus has been telling you what’s been going on this whole time. Over and over, getting frustrated with you now and then. His performance with Mettaton; real and fake. Meeting just like it’s the first time, falling in love… just like it’s the first time.

Showing you how to give everything you have like it’s the last time.

Your hands find Sans’s face, sudden tears blurring your vision.

“I don’t want to go anywhere without you,” you manage through a throat trying to strangle the words out of you.

“when i first met you… felt like i knew you,” he replies softly. “thought it was frisk’s bullshit at first…but it wasn’t, was it? feels like something good’s gonna happen, then it gets hard and _i run away_ every time. don’t know how you can stand it. and it wasn’t anyone’s bullshit but ours.” He exhales raggedly. “we made it all on our own. together.”

You roll up and over him, kneel and lean on your elbows as his arms slide back around you, hold on tight. You can feel the heat and resonance of his still-present genitalia hovering untouched between your legs. You tuck your face between his skull and shoulder, blink slowly at the darkness inside him.

“i don’t know what this is,” Sans admits, voice oddly tight, almost scared. “what we are.”

“We decided we wanted it, though,” you reply softly into hard, complex bone. “It doesn’t just happen on its own. We had to build it together. We still do.”

“you don’t believe in fate, huh?”

“Of _course_ not,” you say quietly.

He exhales softly. “’f _you_ don’t believe in it, can’t see how anyone else can.”

“Things don’t just _happen_ , Sans. You have to actually _do_ them, no matter...” You think about it. “… no matter _when_ they happen. You have to decide, and then you have to _do_ them.”

“that shouldn’t make me feel better, but it does,” he sighs, hands sliding up and down your back slowly. “you got this way of seeing things...explaining why it matters, stead a how it works.” His breathing sounds tense and uneven, like he’s afraid of something even though he _says_ it makes him feel better. It’s like-

“d’you know how it ends this time?” It’s a whispered hiccup.

“Sans.”

“sorry,” he croaks. “-i-i shouldn't-”

“No,” you answer emphatically. “I don’t know. Because if I look, it makes sure that’s...what I’ll decide,” you say, realizing it’s true as you say it. “All my choices matter, and everything’s a choice. Including if I...decide to...look.” You sigh. “It’s not like _looking,_ though. It’s like...being. That’s why it works like that.”

“like waves and particles. they don’t...become til you look at em. don’t exist til you measure em.”

“Yeah,” you agree sadly.

“it sounds scary,” he whispers.

“Yeah,” you admit. “But it seems scary to be you, too.”

“it is,” he sighs. “guess it’s...” he trails off, pulls you down tighter against his hard bones. He makes a choked noise, shakes hard for a second, then freezes. “that’s what you meant before,” he says after a minute or two. “long time ago. that i don’t scare you more than jus’...existing in the first place.”

“Yeah.” You kiss his face softly.

He makes a high, tiny noise; squeezes you even harder.

“i don’t wanna _forget_ ,” he whisper-wails. “don’t wanna let go.”

“It’s okay,” you whisper.

His arms constrict around you, and he shoves his face into your shoulder rough enough to leave a mark. He spasms hard and silent, then keeps tensing and exhaling until his voice breaks out of him with the rhythm of his shaking. He’s wracked with it until his voice disappears again and he sucks in a desperate, shuddering breath.

“how can you _say_ that?” It’s a full-voiced sob that makes your eyes spill.

“It’s _okay_.”

“fuck you,” he keens, shaking with grief even as his hands start roaming your body again hungrily. “i can’t stand to _do it again_. not again.”

“You _already are_ ,” you whisper sadly. “I love you right now, and I’ll love you then, too.”

“fuck you,” he whines again, and you kiss the side of his face softly as he weeps with existential weariness, a soul-deep loss that never stops happening.

“I love you then, too,” you insist.

“make me believe it.” His chin lifts as his arms loosen their deathgrip.

He gasps loudly when your hot mouth finds his vertebrae, and when he exhales there’s a whimper behind it. You eventually pull back and see his sockets are clamped shut. He reaches up to grip the pillow loosely to either side of his neck, huffing softly as he weeps.

You touch his bones reverently, all the spots on his upper body he likes the best. A crease appears between his sockets as you caress his vertebrae with your fingers, and he shivers when you run your palms up the inside of his humerus on either side. You slide the pads of your fingers along his clavicle, down his sternum to his xiphoid process, curve underneath a little. His breath catches, then he exhales raggedly.

He’s so quiet, but it’s not bad. It’s...intense? You don’t know how it’s possible that everything he does turns you on so much, it’s just...how he is, however he is, is the sexiest thing you’ve ever experienced in your life. It’s sexy when he talks, when he’s quiet, when he screams in pleasure or just breathes heavy, when he nips hard or touches lightly.

He lifts his chin again when your hands come up to cup his face between them. He stops weeping after a little while, and finally unclenches his fists to touch you back hungrily, opens his sockets a little. You take your time pressing lips and tasting his magic-dampened bones on maxilla, orbital, mandible. You get up under his chin to push your tongue in there too, listening to his breath tighten gratifyingly.

His miraculous hands explore your body patiently now, smooth and delicate as fine china without the chill or the grate. The way they hold and conform to your shape as they slide around is like nothing else, the way each and every tiny bone works in concert to _feel_ you…the fact that they _can_ feel you…nothing has ever been so calming and exciting at the same time.

You reach around until you find them both, pull them away from your body and kneel up to bring them to your lips. They smell like flesh and bone, like love and hope. They smell like the life you’re building together, and you slip his distals into your mouth one by one to taste it too, listening to his breath go rough, then soft again. You hold his hands in yours and squeeze them thoughtfully; when you glance down at his face the expression there’s close to worship.

You pull his hands up over his head, cross his wrists so you can roll those tiny, perfect bones between your fingers as you lean down on your elbows and press your hot mouth open along his mandible. When he moans it sounds just like the intoxicated, juddering intimacy that’s tingling just below your skin _feels_.

You kiss his fixed grin, tease at it with the tip of your tongue. He opens his mouth the tiny amount he’s able; the same moment your tongue slides in there’s a cooling rush of air around it; his resurrected genitalia brushes yours lightly as you both gasp. You lean up a bit to look down into his face as he makes a shaky, helpless noise.

His skull’s tilted a little to the side in an oddly submissive way, sockets thin slits and his eye lights are so broad you wonder if he can focus them. He squeezes your hands gently as you stare into his eyes; he makes another tiny sound when your genitals brush again, tingly and hot. Something cool touches your inner thigh, and you realize you’re so wet a trail of it clung to him and spindled thin between you, breaking against your leg when you pulled away.

His breath shudders deep in and out, over and over.

This moment stretches and breaks too.

“you gonna take me like this?” he breathes.

His wrists flex lightly in your grip where they’ve apparently ended up; you’re a little amazed you don’t just immediately come. Instead you stroke his bones with your thumbs, watch him carefully as you find him again with hovering, circling hips, set his tip between your soaked lips right where you’re hot and open. His eye lights quiver as he gasps in surprised pleasure.

“oh god...” His breath’s barely vocal, words slow like cold honey heating up, cracking and crystallized, starting to flow bit by bit. “be easy with me…” He trails off, then his exhale tightens into a whimper as you pull his hands down behind his neck, crossing his wrists behind his vertebrae. You keep going until you can lean on your elbows a little more comfortably, and his ribcage is arched up and out like he does when he wants you to touch him there.

You duck your head and dip your tongue into the space between his collarbone and first rib; his pelvis moves, and he whimpers as he penetrates you oh-so-slightly. He arches his neck back, skull framed by his tight, quivering humerus on either side.

“’m sensitive,” he whispers shakily, sockets slipping shut for a moment before he opens them again, tries to focus on you. And the _way_ he looks at you… you try to keep from overstimulating him, but he makes a quivery little sound anyhow.

“ohh,” he exhales, “be easy...” he begs softly through his teeth as you take him inside you a little more. “hold me tight,” he adds, then lets his sockets slip shut and keeps them that way.

You slide down on him all the way to the part where he’s swollen huge and hot, the part he’d worried might get stuck. Now that you feel it pressing up against you, you can see why he might worry about that. You’re wet and open, you already came before and you’re as turned on as you get… and for now you just rock against it gently, watching him carefully and listening to his tiny, helpless noises. You still when he starts weeping again, but he sniffs dryly and moves his skull side to side, flexes his wrists.

“don’t stop,” he whispers, keeping his sockets shut. “st-” he hiccups softly, “stay like this with me.”

You push down on him again, listening to his quiet keen and holding him tight as he arches. You rock back and forth a little… you want to. You think you can, and it might even feel good for you, too…you want to give him this either way. To feel like you’re going to stay with him as long as he needs you to, to make his body feel it. You set your forehead against his, slide your knees farther apart and twist your hips, then push down hard with a soft grunt, gripping his wrists tight as he gasps and lurches under you. His sockets open, the points in them quivering into surprised focus as you grind on him determinedly.

“you, you’re really, _o-oh god-_ ” He cries out sharply as it slips inside you with near-painful abruptness; the way this fits pulls him in _tight_. You moan throatily with pleasure and surprise, and it happens again. He’s wide right where you clench down hard when you come, but this holds you open there even when you grip him. His sockets narrow to slits, and you moan again because the way he’s shaped like this...you can’t _not_ squeeze him, and when you do it pushes him up inside as deep as he can go, then stretches it a little more. It’s not painful, but it’s…intense, and you tilt your hips back a little so he sits more comfortably inside you.

You realize he’s been holding his breath when he lets it out in a bone-deep, soft-shaky moan, his expression raw and vulnerable. He pants softly, meets your eyes as he lifts his chin a little, the way he does when he wants you to kiss him.

He mewls softly when you turn your head to press your hot, open mouth to his jaw and chin.

Your voice shudders out against bone when his trembling pelvis pushes him up into you, starts rocking gentle and insistent as you use your tongue to test the tight magic in his unfused fossa. His body is locked tight into yours, and his hesitant but repetitive little pushes remind you of when he nudges his forehead against you, when he makes his slow, aimless little movements of arousal, when he takes your lips in his teeth, trying to kiss you back. The sounds he’s making are like the inverse of the ones he’d been growling against you earlier. These are almost mournful little cries, wordless begging that gets quieter as it intensifies instead of louder.

When his sobs have gone to whispers he flexes his hands in your grip, then pulls them free when you loosen it. You lean up on your hands, lock your elbows to ease the strain. He slides a hand over your shoulder as he breathes raggedly, and the other comes up to cup your face, shakes a little when you pull up while gripping him tight, then settle back down against his magic-softened pubis. He huffs softly once, twice, then his hand slides from your shoulder to your chest.

“want you to feel this,” he murmurs shakily. “can i share it with you?”

You nod fervently, at a loss for words.

He lets out a tiny whine, and magic beads at the corner of his socket as he strokes your chest. You feel him more than ever, how much he wants you to come out and share this with him. He wants to give you everything he has; not just what he’s got inside your body, but to give you how it feels for him to _be_ in there, too. You rock on him gently, breathing rough and tight as his other arm slides around your back. You bend to the suggestion of his light pressure, and he nuzzles your face gently.

“can i pull you into my hand?” he whispers hesitantly, breath hot and trembling on your lips. You moan as he does a slow grind, making you squeeze his girth up into you tight and hard. He makes a turning-presenting motion with phalanges against your thudding chest to demonstrate; he’s still coaxing and calling you inside. “i know we haven’t-” he interrupts himself with an explosive exhale, “-haven’t done that, but i think you’ll like it,” he manages, then whimpers and presses his forehead to yours as you clench down on him again. “makes it feel so deep,” he adds in a throaty whisper, and you nod furiously as he gazes into your eyes adoringly.

He grips you tight around the waist, pushes himself up inside you hard and keeps you there with a satisfied grunt as he pulls your soul out of your body. You give a shuddering, astonished cry as he pulls you _right into his fingers_ with a deep, curving motion and… _oh god_.

He’s touching you before you’re completely exposed, before you’re even totally condensed, the barest sliver of blue seeping out already around his fingers. Everything you are is threaded onto him the moment it appears, as if you came into being already pierced by bone fingertips. What you feel is _him_ , sliding right into you familiar and close, pulling and touching, loving and sweet. But it _echoes_ somehow, as if for just a moment he’s touching your soul where it manifests… and touching it where it usually is simultaneously. His touch echoes into the place your soul is embedded between everything else that’s you.

Then he gives you _this_ : bodies locked together tight like a puzzle, like fingers woven together, like...oh fuck. He’s not giving you something he’s felt and remembered, he’s opening you wide and letting exactly what he’s feeling right now rush inside you... and then you _squeeze him_.

You can hear his breath sucked in sharp through his nasal cavity. He lets it out in a soft little grunt as he pulls back until the limits of your flesh tug at him deliciously, then holds you tight and steady at the waist again as thrusts up into you hard. He pushes for even more, grinding and nudging as he lets how it feels pour into you. You gasp with the intensity of it, because it’s like no other way he’s been inside you before. He’s never felt so _sensitive_ , like he can feel every atom you’re made of vibrating around him and holding him so close and tight, as if everything you are down to a fundamental level _wants him_.

You let him know how squeezing pulls him into you; he moans with yearning that pours right into you along with everything else in a heady, ecstatic rush.

You want what he wants. You want him to feel this.

His wordless sob of excitement sounds wrung out of him as his trembling hand clatters light across his sternum, then pulls right back to bring him out; this might be the quickest he’s ever pulled with you. You shiver with the unaccustomed urgency of his desire. His breath goes to harsh, vocal pants in anticipation, and when your fingers slide into him he arches back and shouts, shakes top to bottom with your strong touch inside him.

Then you let him feel what it’s like to have him fill you like this, and his moan softens out as the way you feel to each other echoes through you both. You notice suddenly your throat’s a little raw, and you realize you’ve been making even more noise than he has.

Sans’s sockets leak magic copiously; he can’t hide the raw, desperate edge of the pleasure he feels. He huffs softly, strokes your soul and weeps with it. His skull tilts back and he lets you feel his desire contract tight into need, then spread seething-wide back out to saturate you with his strange-shivery feelings of joyous surrender. He watches you feel what he feels, shares it lush and expansive then feeds it back in, over and over. Emotion and sensation go back and forth, echoing out broad and full until it’s _everything_ ; you’re everything.

He wants even more.

So do you.

You hold it like a string stretched taut between you, getting shorter as you circle each other: a spiraling and unhurried approach. You stroke each others’s souls and move in ways to pleasure each other’s bodies, letting desire thicken and slow in yourselves until you’re practically drowning in it.

His fingers and yours slide out together; his trace gently down to the backs of your hands, cupping them the way yours are cupping your souls. They’re so close; pearly white with the point up, luminous midnight with the point down. Tepid white fingerpoints trace the tender folds of flesh at your knuckles as you gaze down into both of you.

Layers of flesh and bone, body and soul like a precious, delicate flower created by a profound act of love.

His fingertips slide back down your wrists, then further toward your elbows.

“wh…” his voice peters out and he takes a deep, shaky breath. “will you do it?”

“Are you _sure_?” you ask as he spends inside you, causing you to chase soft words with a softer moan. His hands leave your arms, then reappear trying to slither between his hipbones and your thighs. He wants you to help him keep them there.

“hold em there like this,” he whispers. “you know i want to…you know ‘m _sure_. this way...” He exhales, shivers. “this way i don’t worry.”

He won’t worry that he’s making you do anything, feels reassured you can stop. Won’t be tempted to do more than feel it; won’t touch, won’t push any magic. And you know he’s anxious about the possibility that he might try and hurt himself, might do some of the things he never wants you to see. But he wants _you_ , and he knows you want him the same way, just as much as he does. Even though he’s afraid, he wants to share everything he is.

You let him slide his hands between you, and you move your knees in to hold his hands firmly. You both know it’s unlikely you’d actually be able to restrain him for real, although you don’t know how strong he really is, or how hard he tries to hurt himself when he gets triggered by something. But you holding him like this comforts him, makes him feel aware of where his hands are, like he knows what his body’s doing. This might even help stop something like that from happening, even if he gets scared. He already let you know.

“I love you,” you say quietly.

“love you too,” he breathes, sockets slitting in anticipation. “’m ready.”

“Here it comes,” you say, and then it does.

Your souls slide right into each other, and the same soft noise happens in a throat that is, and one that isn’t.

There’s no silent, scouring climax this time, because it’s working the way it’s supposed to. Sans is open and ready, you’re aroused and relaxed. Instead, slow tears slide from his sockets, because this is...this is…

The air he draws into himself to help facilitate his essential biological processes, of which breathing is not actually one, shudders out of him expressively. Because just like so many of his bodily functions, breathing and sex are forms of communication for him. You can _feel_ that in him like this, in a way you couldn’t just touching. You understand it, you… become it.

Sans weeps with joy. His shoulders shake silently; he becomes blood and flesh, bones that lie gravid with secret marrow.

It’s _so good_ , the way he always imagined it would be even if the sensations are nothing like he anticipated. And he did imagine it plenty of times; just a feeling. Not with anyone in mind...not until you. This is bubbly and elated, more exciting than he’s used to, and less focused than you’re used to. You’re giving him so much, you’re taking _care_ of him.

This is what you do: take his pain and degradation and turn it inside out, change it to pleasure and love so sweet he can hardly stand it. He _knew_ you could make this good for him, even though he’s afraid. He is, and it is. He shakes with soft sobs….it’s so good. It’s _you_.

He feels utterly _saturated_ with you, thick and dense with lush weight and physicality, steady and strong with presence and decisiveness. To him you feel hot-bright-loud, but threaded through with such assured steadiness, it always makes him feel safe and loved. It’s familiar, and so different, and extremely _more_ … all at once. Your pleasure is enhanced by the bodily process of _closeness_ in him shared and created by both of you, his by physical-chemical effects on you from what your bodies are doing.

You feel the idea that holds your bones together feel _want_ enough to extend past bone to _seek_ , to give of itself by delving deep into slick-snug and loving flesh. Movement reveals texture and heat; the reward of sensation promises even more of itself. He feels his sensitive opening stretched tight, heavy-tender physicality making way for the satisfying heat and pressure of thick, thrumming magic. He groans as the tingle of shed magic penetrates him more deeply than his flesh.

It gets a little intense for a second; the specter of anxiety flickers a shadow over you both.

You coax your souls gently apart; Sans lets out a shaky, vocal exhale of pleasure and relief; you hear yourself making the same sound. Separating felt a lot better than you expected, just as good as putting them together in the first place. It’s not like bodies that crave and deceive, punishing until you give in to what they demand. Souls yearn soft toward each other, and say goodbye with the same delight they greet with. For souls, every moment is always now. It’s not like before, and you can stop if you want to.

“Are you okay?” you ask quietly; Sans nods, sockets long and oval. His teeth part crookedly, and you can feel him relax the rest of the way as his sockets slip shut with a deep sigh.

“you can put it back in if you want. ‘m ready.” He moans when you tighten down on his body, and you realize part of what you’d felt from him before was a sense of this act being...penetrative for him, in an odd, not-exactly-but-sort-of way. A little bit like you feel when he pushes magic inside your soul, maybe. It might have something to do with your soul being stronger than his...or maybe just how he feels about doing this with you right now.

“feels good how you’re doing it,” he adds shakily, tilting his hips as you move on him, caressing the insides of your calves weakly with the backs of his fingers where you have his hands held tight between his body and yours.

“I will. In just a second,” you pant, turning that perspective over in your head. It changes how you feel about this, but not in a bad way.

He hums in agreement, lets out a tighter noise when you rock slow and deep on him, pleasuring your bodies as you gaze into his lovely, luminously iridescent soul. You moan as you push your fingers into your own soul, focusing in on what you want to give him based on the way he feels about this. Touching yourself helps you understand that this experience _is_ being shaped by what you each want, not necessarily inherent to the act despite the relative strength of your soul to his. This is something you and he are equally experienced with, and that being extremely not. Nevertheless, he wants you to direct the experience...to take care of him, make love to him.

This time when you coax your souls together, he cries out and shakes head to toe when you touch. He moans and pants, then calms as he leans in around your steadiness; as soon as he wonders what changed he knows the answer. Based on how this felt for him, you adjusted your intent slightly. Your soul is strong, and he feels every bit of it this way. He also feels how much you want to care for him, how much you want to give him.

Sans’s body trembles delicately under yours; you know as soon as he does that this feels as pleasurable-natural-intuitive as when he pushes magic into your souls at the same time. This is so much headier, because it’s as visceral, as immediate and present as your own feelings. He feels the urge to touch, to push magic just as he expected, but it’s a lot easier to deal with than he thought. Especially when you’re...like this? Steadying him, thick with presence and...patience.

It’s why you can feel what his body wants as much as yours does, so you slowly (and a little awkwardly since he can’t pull out of you) change positions. You lean back against the armrest, cup your merged soul close to your chest and open your legs even more, inviting him to move in you the way you know he wants. He leans his elbows to either side of you, comes so close there’s only a tiny space in front of your chest where you hold everything you are together between your bodies carefully. You feel full and opened by his body, just like your presence fills and opens him, too. He feels his own breath shuddering out helplessly against your face, and you feel the urgency that has him already pulling back as far as he can to thrust back into you.

Because it’s almost here, and it’s going to make him come.

And then it is.

The shape of his promise ignites inside you like a match thrown at a snowflake made of gunpowder. It was already there, and it already almost killed him because you wouldn’t let him keep it. Because that’s how your soul works, and he’s vulnerable to something like that in ways you aren’t.

His promise pours to fill the spaces your promise isn’t, quenching like magic sliding between living atoms.

To share everything he is.

To ease your pain.

To take care of you, to love you, to let you love and take care of him.

Any place and time you both exist, this helps you find each other.

Who knows if this is the first time or the last time; neither of those mean anything in this context. Sans’s smile blooms inside you; he’d rather take his chances accidentally dying of broken promises than living without you when he might not have to. When he weeps you feel it inside you too; when you open up enough to love someone, you might get hurt. It’s a chance he’s willing to take with someone as reliable and reckless as you.

He can’t hold on to anything, but this is the next best thing. Integrity means a part of you will always remember him, will always recognize him even when he can’t remember. Even when everything’s been torn from him yet again, so thoroughly he doesn’t even know it’s gone.

You could never mistake his body for anything else, because his love for you _is_ a part of his body, and it always has been. Your love for him was already in your soul waiting, banked like coals under insulating ash, like a perfectly preserved specimen under layers of silted clay. Tucked like a secret inside your timeless self, a gift waiting to be unwrapped once again.

A dual promise like a candle waiting to be lit at both ends, burning inevitably towards each other until you both end.

All you have to do is exist in the same time and place, then keep deciding you both want it.

He feels this, too, just as much where he pulls and pushes within you like an unstoppable tide, nudging him inevitably towards the edge of what his body can handle, what his soul can take. It always makes what happens next a little easier to bear.

You feel the sharp edge of his pain and the profound depth of his comfort as he presses his devastated, magic-soaked face to yours.

With a deceptively soft exhale and your soul merged into his, he comes.

His soul is laid bare, and so is his body: you feel the tactile memory of having once been human in the magic that holds him together as it sparks bright with sensation that used to have a different purpose. He would never have known that’s what it is that if he wasn’t merged and feeling it along with you. His genitalia isn’t even human-shaped right now, but what drives this process originates there. The desire in his body for this is vestigial and so is his orgasm; its purpose is to facilitate rather than procreate, and it is being fulfilled now. Your metaphysical presence grounds and enhances what he feels from this; your pleasure echoes back into him until his skull thrums with it, makes it feel as natural as his own voice resonating through living bone as he lets ecstasy churn him under its waves.

It turns out this is yet another thing his body can do that feels so much _better_ when he shares it…with _you_. Even more than sharing how your body feels with him, _becoming_ the way you are now makes him understand the sensations he’s capable of in a new way, makes him feel like he knows what they’re for. They create pleasure and joy for their own sake, because that’s the entire point, isn’t it?

Everything you are shakes with his climax but he doesn’t stop; he wants yours just as much as his, because that’s the same thing right now. His instinct tells you to let your hands slide away as he leans in, and you wrap your arms around him and squeeze encouragingly instead. He presses his whole body closer until you’re aligned at every surface possible, and your merged souls quiver pinioned and strangely half-submerged in each of you. Sans is rocking into you, held deep by your shapes right where you want him; he moves exactly how you like it best because he feels it too.

He sobs violently, helpless around the thick-hot pressure of being inescapably filled and insistently fucked by his own body. Your vision grays with the exquisite overstimulation of moving inside your soft-textured, quivering heat; the way you lock him inside lush and tight each time he pulls back, your wet velvet unfurled by the tip when he pushes back in.

Your climax happens like a spool thrown away from a held thread: bouncing with momentum as it unravels the tension from your body, alternating with near-still, almost vibrating peaks of sensation. What you feel is so _visceral_ to him, thick and deep and inevitable; wet and heavy like his ocean. When you reach your final peak your souls finally separate with a melting quiver, and a fine layer of his magic sheds out as he moans softly. The taste of his body fills the spaces between where you exist all at once, tingling deep inside you, then even more inside than that.

A shared revelation settles on you both like ash: his magic still communicates, but its message is simplified and translated to something your physical body can understand. Pleasure and presence thrown to the sky on soft white wings to find you, spiced with the unmistakable taste of _him_. The atoms, molecules, cells that buzz with your inexplicable life and agitate towards him feel like _you_ ; he could never mistake you for anyone or anything else.

And then you’re not not sure how long you’ve been laying there together wet and spent, trying to understand how to think and feel separately again. He moves in you again hesitantly, and you let out a soft keen. Hard, smooth fingertips glide towards where your bodies remain joined, and you groan and shudder hard as they test the rim of where he stretches you.

“got a question,” he breathes in your ear, and without his soul’s understanding his voice would slip away under your own cries as he rocks into you yet again. “think you can take a little more for me?” You moan wordlessly; you’re so full of him, buzzing and tingling. His fingers slide down to your perineum, letting you feel where it bulges with him, how it stretches thin and tight as he pulls back. “don’t wanna hurt you pulling that out…it’s not as easy as going in. wanna see if it’ll shed a little more ‘fore i try it,” he whispers coaxingly. “you wanna try n go again? otherwise might...be a while.”

You breathe harshly into the bone your face is pressed against, rub your forehead along his clavicle. You push your hand down between your legs, find the sensitive, hard little bump above where his body penetrates yours. Jump when you give it a rub, then moan soft when you move slightly to the side of it instead. There you go.

You nod gently against his face and he moans, starting to move in you again gently. His fingers stay where they are, massaging lightly. “that okay?” he asks, starting to breathe hard again already. “might ease it up a little, help it stretch when i pull it. it’s fine if you...” You’re nodding against him again; it’s actually kind of doing something for you, too. “you wanna lay down more?”

You realize you’re still bent up against the armrest, love-dazed and fuck-drunk, filled to the brim with everything he is until you’re spilling over. At your nod he pulls your hips gently forward, lies you down easy with a hand between your shoulderblades like you’re fragile and important. Like he loves you, because he does.

“yeah,” he whispers when he sees your face, followed by a rounded exhale as he caresses your chin. “you go ‘head and relax, jus’ like that.” He’s up on his elbow, but he ducks his head to nuzzle your face, then reaches back under and around to where his fingers were rubbing before.

“i ever tell you how much i like that you let me do it inside like this?” he whispers after a minute. “not jus’ cause it feels good. not jus’ cause it reminds me how much i like when you do it to me, either.” You can hear the smile in his voice even as it breaks; his nasal bone traces your eyebrow gently. “it feels special,” he gushes, his breath starting to go ragged along with yours. He’s giving you short, quick thrusts as he rubs underneath, then he uses his fingers to press firmly, changing the angle to one that pushes a high, surprised moan out of both of you. “ _…stars._ ” His arm slides tight underneath your shoulders, and he presses his hard, smooth-and-textured face into your neck. “s’like i can show you this way… make you feel it. make you feel how special you are to me,” he whines.

You sob out a held breath, then suck it back in as the tension you’re feeling ratchets up under his sweet rambling, but it’s slow going. You’re shaking with overstimulation and renewed urgency; so full of him, beyond sated and still so sensitive, but… He curses softly and holds you tighter as your soft, sharp little noises happen with every breath you take. He can tell you’re having a little trouble finding the path; the way he’s rubbing gets more expansive, slick with your excitement as it builds yet again, wet with his magic until his hard fingers send it into your body, sliding between your substance. When his touch gets shaky, smooth, warm bone brushes your asshole, and you barely recognize the shaky groan that slips out of you before you know it.

“sorry,” he pants quickly. “didn’t mean to, but...” He inhales a ragged breath. “you liked it?”

You pull him tight against you with your arm, open your legs wide.

“I don’t know,” you whisper, face burning as you rub yourself furiously, already stuffed full of him where he’s locked into you tight, so deep and resonant you feel like you can taste him. You sob again wordless, squeeze him up into you. You’ve had him so much, you’ve had him every way you can think of and you still want more.

“you want me to try it again?”

Oh fuck. _Fuck_. You nod against his collarbone, then let out a slow whine as he brushes across. You let your head fall back on the cushion again with a sigh, giving in.

“Yeah,” you admit, tears starting in your eyes for no reason you can understand. “I like it.”

“oh god,” he whispers, rubbing you there some more as he fucks into you eagerly. “me too,” he gasps, working your body enthusiastically from inside and out. His hard, flexible palm pushes against your perineum, then slides across where he penetrates you, mobile, curious fingers underneath circling and teasing at the tight bud of your ass. You tense up hard, shuddering wildly and clamping down on him until he cries out, and your needy wail follows it.

“Will you put your fingers in?” you choke out, utterly beside yourself.

“oh fuck,” he groans, moving with increasing urgency even as he leans up. You try and duck your head, then just close your leaking eyes. “i want to,” he gasps quickly. “you sure?” You nod frantically, then let out another raw sob.

“I’m so close,” you whine, shoulders shaking. “I want you so much.”

His arm tightens under you, and his face comes to rest against yours carefully even though he never stops moving in you. “okay,” he breathes shakily, panting with exertion and trembling with excitement. “let me know.” You make a strange, shaky cry as he slides in slow and careful with two thin phalanges, still pressing with his metacarpals (carpals? Do you even know anymore?). He gives you a tiny bit at a time, slicked with your wetness and the sensitizing-numbing tingle of his magic, watching you carefully until they rest inside you comfortably.

Rather than trying to move them in and out, he just...rubs like he was, his whole hand giving steady pressure and subtle movement, supporting and enhancing the way he pleasures you with his magic. Oh, fuck….that’s what it feels like. Reminds you of when you push your fingers inside him body and soul, the way he feels how you’re in there for _him_. He’s in there for you: to give you what you want, get you where you want to go.

Yeah. That’s exactly how it is, and you feel indescribably open, giving and getting with everything you have as his fingers sink impossibly deeper. His whole hand rubs in a circular motion, alternating synchronized and syncopated until your body can hardly tell what exactly is where anymore. Everything is so overwhelmingly filled with him: hot magic and hard bones insistently opening and filling slick openings, wet, mobile sensations you’re not sure you can even categorize anymore. Your cries go faint and guttural, then soften out to undecorated breaths unexpectedly.

“stay with me,” he breathes. You can feel his hot breath cooling your open eyes as you realize you can’t actually see anything, and he means it in a different way this time. “want you to stay with me, okay?” You’ve never been fucked til you passed out before; as it turns out that sort of thing can just start to sneak up on you.

“...good,” you whisper, suck in a shuddering breath. “…It’s so good. Don’t stop…” He doesn’t and he hasn’t; in fact, he’s speeding up with sharp, uneven gasps you can hear being pushed through his teeth.

“… _babe_ …” His voice shatters; he breathes your name. “’m gonna come again.” It’s a strangled, fervent plea. “can i do it hard? you okay?”

You’re better than _okay_ ; you’re pretty sure you’re ascending to _another fucking plane of existence_ , but you manage to nod and grunt out something affirmative. But you can’t think or feel anything except the sense-blending movement of magic and bones inside you, your own shaky fingers fumbling apart the tight knot of your tension. Can’t experience anything but his body like a stop-motion tide surging back and forth, relentless now above the spot his hard, flexible fingers test your limits much more pleasantly than you would have suspected was possible. It feels like he’s fucking you everywhere at once as he tenses into silence once more.

The sound he makes as reaches the edge is small and hurt; his phalanges circle tight-quick inside you, firm upward pressure pushing his genitalia along with them as he flexes and pulses, using his hand like he’s encouraging your body to pleasure itself and his at the same time. Like he’s holding everything you are in his cupped hand, and you’re about to float right up out of yourself into the fucking stratosphere.

Then his tight-shaky bones loosen again all at once, just as abrupt and surprising as before as his weight grounds you deep right here with him. He shouts his release tortured and hoarse into your fevered skin along with even more spent magic from his sockets; his body stutters and shakes like he’s about to fall apart into a pile of bones right there on top of you. But he doesn’t, and he steadies eventually, mewling broken little bits of phrases and tracing words of encouragement into the back of your neck with his free hand.

A few minutes later you feel a thick tingle of his magic shedding out, but he keeps going until your thoughts turn to water, and it happens again. His slurred endearments and desperate moans fill your ears because you’re holding your breath again...so close. Almost there… And holy shit, he must be bending his thumb backward because the tip runs quick-bright like a sliding pinch along the tender rim where he stretches you to the absolute limits of flesh and blood, finally easing out his distended magic along with a fluid rush of your built-up excitement. His hard proximal rubs the sore little lip of flesh gently even as he pushes half his length back inside, like a tactile apology and a lingering reminder at once.

What finally pushes you over the edge is realizing he can feel the tip of his genitalia fucking into you with his fingers through the paper-thin, trembling membrane between them; he curls his phalanges in with hesitant awe, pushing after the sliding bulge where he thrusts and letting out an astounded, overstimulated cough. With a guttural yell that’s almost a scream, you give him your final climax with half his hot length still pumping into you eagerly, and his thumb plunging boldly inside on the slickness of your release beside it, massaging you open wide.

Wowwww.

Maybe you did pass out after all, because the next thing you know is that he’s holding you close, he’s not inside you anymore, and you’re kind of sore there now. Both of your ‘theres’. He rubs your shoulder lightly with his forearm and nudges his skull against your hair, patient and soothing, and when you finally figure out his tight little whispers are words they make you tear up.

“… ‘cause i believe you… you look at me like that, an’ i _believe it_. love you so much, okay?”

“Me too,” you croak, then try and clear your throat a little. “Holy shit.” You manage to get an arm over his ribcage, try and give him a squeeze but you just sort of twitch. “That...was the best sex I’ve ever had.”

He lets out a dazed little laugh, and his voice is extremely unsteady. “might go without sayin’, but, uh...same here? …heh? that was a real, uh. bonding experience,” he finishes in a dry-soft, humbled little whisper.

You groan wordless and satisfied.

He makes his little throatclearing noise and gives you a hug. “i, uh. hope it’s okay, but i checked on you? made sure you’re not hurt or anything down there. you were kinda out of it for a minute.”

“Yeah,” you whisper softly, managing to give him something like a hug in return. “...yeah. Thanks for taking care of me,” you finish thickly, then give a little sniff.

“you okay?” he whispers into your hair.

“Better than okay,” you reply. “Don’t let me go.”

“yeah,” he whispers raggedly. “yeah, okay.”

After a long time, you whisper again.

“What we did...do you know what it is?”

“nope,” he replies, barely audible and squeezing you tight.

“I’m scared,” you admit tightly.

“me too.”

You sleep together, wake up, eat, bathe and sleep again. A message wakes him up, makes him whine slow and tight before he cuts it off with a grunt and a deep nasal inhale. Then he sighs, lies down and cuddles back into you.

“don’t ask me,” he whispers into the back of your neck. He shakes, and so does his breathing. You feel the his magic tingle against you, but he doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t let you go.

You’re quiet until he sleeps. When you check your viewer you see Frisk sent it to you, too.

You don’t have to ask.

**the kid:** I know what you’re waiting for.

 

_When you say it's gonna happen "now"_   
_When exactly do you mean?_   
_See, I've already waited too long_   
_And all my hope is gone_

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jsyk we're playing with retrocausality. again. no quiz or anything.
> 
> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-retrocausality/#AllOnceLagrMode
> 
> also helpful:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave%E2%80%93particle_duality


	65. missed stakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rebecca Sugar – Time Adventure  
> https://youtu.be/Xr53S9vIbCE

> We are all familiar with the idea of _continuity_. To be continuous is to constitute an unbroken or uninterrupted whole, like the ocean or the sky _._ A continuous entity—a _continuum—_ has no “gaps”. Opposed to continuity is _discreteness_ : to be discrete is to be separated, like the scattered pebbles on a beach or the leaves on a tree. 
> 
> Continuity connotes unity; discreteness, plurality.
> 
> While it is the fundamental nature of a continuum to be __undivided__ , it is nevertheless generally (although not invariably) held that any continuum admits of repeated or successive __division__ __without limit.__ This means that the process of dividing it into ever smaller parts will never terminate in an __indivisible__ or an __atom—__ that is, a part which, lacking proper parts itself, cannot be further divided. In a word, continua are __divisible without limit__ or __infinitely divisible.__
> 
> The unity of a continuum thus conceals a potentially infinite plurality.
> 
> <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/continuity/>

 

When it happens, you’re just laying on the couch together at his place, holding tight and petting each other raw, watching some kind of protozoa marathon.

“FOR FUCK’S _SAKE_ , SANS,” Papyrus blurts as he literally walks through the front door. “YOU NEVER CHECK ON ME WHEN YOU SHOULD! NOoooOOoo, YOU ONLY PEEK WHEN I’M TRYING TO- UGH!” He brushes off a few pieces of pressboard shrapnel from his face and shoulders. “AND WHERE IS YOUR PHONE?? LET ME GUESS. IN A JAR OF PICKLES? ON THE MOON? IT DOESN’T MATTER. FOR NOW, LET’S JUST-” he comes and scoops up his brother in one arm, then you in the other and starts jogging back to the obliterated front door, “- _PRETEND_ THAT YOU DID CHECK, AND I DIDN’T HAVE TO COME AND PICK YOU UP LIKE A SACK OF YO-YOS.”

“paps,” Sans manages to gasp, “what’s the-”

“ _ **IT’S TIME**_ ,” he says with an edge in his voice you don’t think you’ve ever heard before, and it turns your blood to ice. “LET’S TAKE THE CAR.”

Sans sags visibly, his sockets closing in resignation as you look at him horizontally across Papyrus’s body. “you got it, bro. he message you?”

Papyrus nods tersely, sets both of you down carefully in the backseat of his little red sports car like eggs in a carton. Then he leaps into the driver’s seat and throws his suddenly bare phalanges back towards his brother, who leans back until his skull touches the seat and grabs your hand too. You slam your eyes shut and feel a much bigger lurch than usual; you know you’re outside before you open them because the temperature's dropped about ten degrees and it smells like ponderosa pine.

You’re on the lower south slope of Mt Ebott.

All three of you take your time getting out of the car, then slowly approach Frisk and Flowey.

Papyrus turns his skull and freezes you with a look, then touches your arm to keep you back a moment, not that you needed the help. Sans keeps shuffling towards them, hard face lax like he’s in a dream; you and Papyrus linger.

“WE’VE GONE OVER THIS BEFORE, AND SO FAR. IT’S NOT...A PROBLEM. YET? BUT FROM HERE…WHATEVER YOU DO,” he says slowly, “ _DON’T. CHECK_.”

You nod your head and try to remember how to breathe. Whatever he’s going through is intense enough that you can see the black points in his sockets, just barely darker against the midnight-sunset iridescence suddenly quivering around them. His hand tightens gently on your arm for a bracing moment.

“I DON’T REGRET IT,” he caws softly, then walks doubletime on ridiculously long bone legs to catch up with his brother. Neither of them seems in an actual hurry, though.

Oh. You realize why once you’re a few feet behind them, where they’ve already come to a stop near the two deathless, eternal children who caused all of this. And are now in the process of ending it, facing each other in front of some sort of pit.

…Oh.

Whatever Frisk was trying to do…

They’ve already done it.

 


	66. in medias RESET

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **[updated archive warnings; death and ambiguous mortal peril]**
> 
> Nine Inch Nails – The Wretched  
>  https://youtu.be/ANjQ8wI-W7g

Flowey staggers as he holds on to Frisk’s clothing, which is a feat for a being without legs.

“Frisk,” he whispers, tears streaming down his face. “It…it didn’t work the way you wanted, but it worked the...the way _I wanted_. Please, just. Listen to me. Really _listen_ , okay??”

Frisk just stares.

“It’s been fifty two years, Frisk,” he practically moans. “Up here on the surface, roaming around, you skipping and starting over _even here_...for _me_ it’s been that long. How long has it been for _you_?” He weeps earnestly, but Frisk doesn’t say anything, just makes a low noise in their throat as they hold their fisted hands to their chest.

“ _I can go back_ ,” he whispers, shaking with adamant desire. “Whatever this is, whatever it was that you just gave me...I just….” His mouth gapes; he hasn’t changed, at least not physically that you can see. He looks the same as always, except… “I don’t know how I know or why it’s possible, but I can go back now.”

Frisk is shaking their head, tears streaming from their narrow glittering eyes to slide on tracks already dried.

“Please. I’m begging you. Chara...Frisk. _Please_.”

Flowey doesn’t breathe, but he squeezes Frisk’s arms with his vines for emphasis.

“I’m dying,” he says gently, implacably. “I’m dying the right way, even after….even after everything?” Flowey looks briefly at Sans and Papyrus.

Papyrus nods sadly; Sans doesn’t move or say anything. Just stares through narrowed sockets, crooked line of black between his upper and lower teeth like there’s a heavy wind in his tight face. Doesn’t breathe.

“Thank you.”

Frisk is still giving their silent denial.

“I’ll always be with you, Frisk. Okay? I’m not going anywhere, and neither is Chara. We’ll be with you forever and ever, but _let me go_ now. Let me _move on_ this time. I love you.”

With a peaceful smile, the last piece of Asriel finally lets go.

Frisk staggers heavily to their feet in disbelief, dust pouring through their fingers. Their head swings around, but you can tell they’re not really seeing anything. A high pitched keening noise starts to come from them as they dig their fingernails into their chest.

Sans’s eye lights dim, then disappear. “g-guess that’s it, then.” It’s a hiccuped gasp.

Papyrus sighs heavily, then turns around to kneel in front of his brother. He pulls off his gloves and just drops them there in the dirt, and his phalanges rasp over Sans’s skull. He bows his head, and his left socket meets Sans’s with a clack; you see a flash. A burst of dissonant tones and static.

Papyrus stands and gives you a slow nod before walking back to his car at a sedate pace. Frisk’s keen gets louder as he opens the door, and you see him fiddle with something for a moment before a loud cranking sound happens, and he reclines rather abruptly. His knees stick up knobbily over the doors of the convertible, and you hear a slow beat and synthesizers start. A triangle dings, echoes off the mountain.

_Close your eyes, give me your hand, darlin’_  
_Do you feel my heart beating?_  
_Do you understand?_  
_Do you feel the same?_

Sans laughs humorlessly. “figures. guess i know why i hate this song now.”

You close the distance remaining between you with a few unsteady steps, then move to take his cold, bony fingers in yours. They’re shaking.

“There’s really nothing we can do, is there.”

“nope,” he answers quietly, even though it wasn’t really a question. He steadies you as you wobble yourself into a sitting position on the ground, and you return the favor as he sits in your newly created lap, wraps his bones around you tight. This isn’t fair, but this is what’s happening anyway.

_Say my name_  
_Sun shines through the rain_  
_A whole life so lonely_  
_And then come and ease the pain_  
_I don't want to lose this feeling, oh..._

You’ve spent as much of it as you can doing the best you could, what you felt was right, what you wanted to be doing, what you needed to be doing. And now you’re exactly where you want to be when everything ends. Again.

“I love you,” you say softly.

Sans’s arms tighten around you even more as you listen to Frisk’s toneless screams.

“love you too, readz. _love you_ , okay?”

Sans is panting shallow and fast now; you rub his shoulderblade over his shirt and hoodie with the inside of your wrist, just how he likes. You don’t wonder how many times you did this already. You don’t wonder if that’s what you’re going to forget first.

  
_Am I only dreaming...  
Or is this burning…?_

“It’s a _good story_ ,” you say faintly. “This is a good story _anyways_. It’s the one I needed, and so did you. We can always come back again, okay? It’s all right here. It’ll be _right here_ waiting for us…”

Sans starts to sob, his fingers curl hard into your shirt as he muffles them in your shoulder, become fists that pull hard-shaky at cloth. Your head’s right next to his, both of you looking down into the secret space between your bodies. The one you create by existing at the same place, at the same time. You hope you do that again soon.

_Is this burning...an eternal flame?_

Frisk yelps strangely, then you hear their renewed shriek dwindle.

Then, abruptly.

It ends.

“… _ **fuck!**_ ” Sans screams brokenly, choked breaths heaving tepid and terrified through the fabric of your clothes, fingers gripping you hard enough to hurt. “….fuck! f-fuck, fuck,” he mutters, “fuck… _d-don’t_ , don’t forget, don’t forget, don’t forget, _**don’t forget, don’t forget, don’t-**_ **”**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it occurred to me very belatedly that uh. flowey probably counts as a major character. truly sorry about that. i'm on a lot of drugs and i wrote three novels backwards in six months. this chapter was written umm in january.


	67. Come Lay Your Bones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [unreality, extreme temporal discomfort, abuse, past sexual abuse]

“-forget that’s what’s really important, babygirl. All you need in this life’s someone who loves you, someone to _share_ all those good things with. And don’t listen to _anyone_ who tries to tell you _they ain’t good._ ”

Your mother gets rambly when she’s been drinking, and it makes her smell odd, but you don’t mind. She only hits you when she’s sober, and she doesn’t mean it. It only happens when she has one of her turns, and they don’t usually last very long. You know she doesn’t even recognize you when she gets like that, and you always manage to keep her away from the baby. Afterwards, she’s sorry.

“Even...even that...”

She’s going to talk about it again. You don’t mind. Your mama fixed it, and that’s all in the past now.

“Even what… some a what the bad man did. It’s jus’… for when you’re _older_ , when you’re ready.”

Well. You hadn’t been expecting that. And you sincerely can’t imagine ever actually enjoying anything remotely like it.

“I don’t think so, mama. I’m glad you made him go away, though.”

“I know, babygirl. I’d do it again, too.”

You’d all had to move, of course. You missed your friend sometimes, but at least Angela was too little to have a for-real friend like you’d had. Angie was too little to remember her old name anyways, and you’d never liked yours in the first place. It had been a girl’s name, and that made you feel weird. When your mom had told you that you could pick a whole new first name to go with your shared new last one, you’d been overjoyed.

You mother had been less so at your choice, said it wasn’t a ‘real name’.

Well, you’re not a real person, so it works out.

When you’d told your mom that, her search history has started doing that thing again. ‘How to deal with trauma under the age of-’, ‘how to explain—to children’… and the glossy books with the plain squares of color around the title and author she always orders and never actually reads started showing up again, all that stuff. So you’d made sure not to say anything like that again… at least not to her.

She already feels bad enough that she can’t risk taking you to therapy.

You wish you could explain to her that this is just a story, so it’s okay. It’s not real, and neither are any of the things that happened to you. Nothing the bad man had made you do, none of _you_ are real. That makes it okay, makes it easier to smile and nod, to tell your mother what she needs to hear, to wake up and get out of bed every day, even when something tells you it might be better to just stay there forever, or until everything that’s _you_ just...goes away.

Somewhere Else, just like you used to.

“I don’t regret it,” she whispers, and when you glance up, she’s looking at the wall, not at you.

“I know, mama,” you breathe shakily. It’s dark, but the sclera of her eyes shine wetly even in the dim glow striping through the blinds in your bedroom.

Her hand flops heavy-limp on your shoulder, hot even through the blanket.

“…babygirl. You’re _mine_. I don’t regret it.”

Oh. This is the other thing she doesn’t regret.

“I know, momma.”

The birth certificate with your new first and last name isn’t the first falsified one you’ve had. But you’re not a real person, so it’s okay. You’re too smart for your own good sometimes, but you’re definitely smart enough to know better than to ask about things other kids have sometimes. Things like ‘fathers’ and ‘grandparents’; all you have is a ‘cousin’ or two that you know aren’t blood relatives.

“ **BROTHER**!”

It’s Papyrus. Why can you still hear him?

You look up at your mother. She’s crying now, but it’s not bad. She seems relieved; when she’s drunk, she sometimes lets herself see that you _really do_ understand what she means. And that you understand she means what she says, too.

You know where your smart comes from. You inherited it. And no one thinks it to look at your momma; she’s heavyset, short, and tired-looking. She doesn't take care of her hair, and you're still too little for her to trust you to do it for her. She’s sweet and nurturing, dark-skinned and dulcet-voiced. Her guitar fills the pantry even when she’s between jobs. Even when she’s been drunk for as long as she has been this time, because the songs she plays and sings are ones no one has ever heard before.

Priceless.

Now no one but you remembers them, and you won’t share them with anyone else.

Selfish.

“ _SANS_!” He’s running towards the pit now.

She’s weaned Angie by now, but she still won’t do anything about the time bomb strapped to her chest. She’s so brave; brave enough to do anything. Brave enough to keep and nurture the product of her worst shame and degradation, even when they’re not even a real person. Brave enough to make sure three grown men got what they had coming, smart enough get away with it flawlessly each time.

When no one thinks ‘a person like that’ can be smart, well. That just makes it easier. It’s the flipside of being someone no one cares what happens to. You make your _own_ justice when that’s your lot.

Nobody asks to be born. That’s the understanding you and your mother share every time you look at each other.

Your mother is the bravest person you know, but she’s not brave enough to keep herself from doing the one thing you can never forgive her for.

“ **SANS!”** He sounds... airborne. **  
**

Why can you hear him _now_?

You went away for a reason, and he’s not even calling you. He’s calling his

“ **Brother!(your presence/imperative; urgently)”**

You listen to your mother’s soft, drunken weeping for a few more seconds, then sigh.

You still don’t forgive her for leaving you.

“Sorry, momma.” you say quietly. “I have to go.”

You wish you knew how to wipe the sick-scared look off her face, but you’ve got more important places to be right now.

You hope the root doesn’t break, but you have a feeling it will anyways.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Didn’t Leave Nobody But The Baby (performed by Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Gillian Welch)  
> https://youtu.be/p2weIVqWXOw  
> "Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby"  
> https://www.loc.gov/folklife/lomax/lomaxiconicsonglist.html  
> Performed by Sidney Hemphill Carter. Recorded in Senatobia, Mississippi, 1959.  
> Call number: AFC 2004/004: T862R13
> 
> *ETA: holy shit 500 kudos? Thank you so much <3


	68. OUT, DAMNED SPOT!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> um. so if you’ve been saying to yourself “heyyy the way you’re describing magic sounds more like a Higgs-like field than what we might traditionally think of as ‘matter’…” well  
> you’d be correct  
> but  
> I like to think I put my own spin on it  
> (slide whistle noise)
> 
> Rasputina – Mayfly  
> https://youtu.be/EI-LnAnTeVs

“Brother!(your presence/imperative; urgently)”

Sans’s eye lights flicker back into startled existence inches away from yours, and you slam your eyes shut. When you open them you’re at the bottom of the hole.

You yell and crawl-stagger back, begin sobbing uncontrollably when you see Frisk’s broken body. Papyrus is crouched beside them, holding something together.

Holding something else _in_ that definitely looks like it shouldn’t be on the outside of a person.

“They are dead(physical function: NULL) and yet we(timeline) still exist. Take them to Toriel(healing; imperative)!”

Sans gasps, lurches forward and whips his hands outward. He touches them with both, taking over exactly where Papyrus was holding. It looked like maybe their upper leg?

They unravel immediately, and Papyrus turns to you, stands up slowly. You can see the points in his sockets as he stares through you; tears run down his impassive face as blood drips from his limp, bare phalanges. As you watch, they begin to shake.

“It has been too long(temporal),” he says, the information clear and precise issuing from his blank face. “They can no longer unmake(annihilation) this timeline.”

His arms slide around himself, smearing Frisk’s blood around as he he shivers violently. You noticed there’s a bed of crushed yellow flowers at his feet, spattered with disturbingly nonspecific gore.

“ **It is… over** **(RESET: NULL)** **.** ”

  
He looks like he sees you, finally. “For this version(temporal/extant) of us, at least(only).”

He wipes his face with his scarf, smearing that too.

“s-s-SANS HAS TO STAY WITH FRISK TO HELP TORIEL HEAL THEM. THEY NEED FOOD AND HEALING AT THE SAME TIME TO… TO FIX THEM, AND TORIEL CAN’T DO BOTH. IT’S b-BAD, AND I’M...NOT SURE...” He shakes himself, rattling despite the muffling undergarment. “I WILL TAKE US BACK.”

You look up at the spot of light far above. You wouldn’t have believed he could survive a fall from that height, much less a jump.

Frisk hadn’t.

“How long...will it take? Is Sans checking in with you?”

He nods. “NOT VERY LONG.” He holds out his arms and you walk forward hesitantly; he tilts his skull at you. “I CAN CARRY YOU UP. IT ISN’T FAR. OR...ARE YOU WORRIED YOU CAN’T HOLD ON? I CAN TIE YOU, BUT I...”

He cuts off at your rapid headshake.

“NO TIME TO WASTE, THEN.”

He looks up at the light filtering down from far above, then crouches down so you can climb on his back. Papyrus smells like his own magic, MTT-brand cosmetics, the thick, meaty rust of blood, and something even funkier you decide not to think about too hard. He sighs.

“ARE YOU SURE YOU CAN HOLD ON?”

“Yeah,” you complain weakly as he puts your legs over his ilia. “I’m fine. I’ll...be fine. I can do this.” You wrap your arms around his shoulders, try to find a comfortable position. There isn’t one, but it seems like there’s some padding in there somewhere which is somewhat helpful.

“OKAY,” he approves after a minute of adjustments, then grabs the side of the hole and just….starts ascending.

After you’re far enough from the bottom that a fall would damage you, your limbs decide to start shaking.

“STOP THAT,” Papyrus snips at you, annoyed.

He grunts a little as he grips a root; you hang on as tight as you can with your arms around his shoulders, legs shoved between his pelvis and ribcage piggyback style. His narrow iliac crests dig in the underside of your thighs even through his clothes, but endorphins take care of any joint pain you might be experiencing easily.

You swallow convulsively around your nausea as you see the blood coating his bare phalanges, drying and flaking as they work furiously to find purchase in the crumbly vertical dirt in front of you both.

“I UNDERSTAND THE TEMPTATION-” he pants with effort, “-BUT THIS REALLY ISN’T THE BEST TIME TO-”

The root breaks.

Papyrus finds something else to grab onto fairly easily.

“SEE? IF YOU HADN’T CHECKED, I COULD HAVE DONE THIS MUCH MORE EASILY. BUT NOW WE HAVE TO DO IT THE _HARD_ WAY.”

“Sorry?” you try, shamefaced.

Time seriously just _doesn’t make sense_ , which you suppose makes its own sort of sense considering it isn’t actually real.

NO, I… I SUPPOSE CONSIDERING THE OUTCOME THAT I SHOULD ACTUALLY THANK YOU.”

“I’m _freaking out_ , Papyrus. What the fuck is going on?”

“FRISK IS HURT,” he says in clipped tones. “I’M CARRYING YOU OUT OF THE SAME HOLE THEY ORIGINALLY FELL UNDERGROUND FROM.”

You keep shaking, and he sighs again. Not unkindly.

“WHY DON’T YOU EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT YOU THINK IS HAPPENING?” he tries. “THAT USUALLY SEEMS TO HELP YOU CALM DOWN.”

He’s not wrong.

“Um. okay. So ever since Sans told me about magic and souls, I’ve been thinking of it a lot like a...Higgs-like field.”

“WHAT’S THAT?”

You pant, lean your face into his back.

“Okay, so. The Higgs field used to be just a theory. Because, um. The math people use to explain how particles behave...um. Quarks, gluons, all that stuff…those equations only work if the particles don’t have any mass.”

“THAT FEELS LIKE A FAIRLY FATAL FLAW,” Papyrus quibbles. “UNLESS THEY _DON’T_ ACTUALLY HAVE MASS? WELL. FAR BE IT FROM ME TO JUDGE ANYONE’S RELIGION,” he grunts, shoving the wide toe of his boot right into a soft patch of dirt on the wall of the pit. You decide to ignore the peanut gallery this time.

“But, uh... they _do_ have mass. So Higgs theorized something in the environment we don’t know about was causing that. Um...like they’re moving through something resistant.”

You peek. Papyrus is still scrambling for purchase, so you hide your face again, trying to breathe normally.

“Um… so. When he first said it, people thought it was way too out there. Like he was saying, uh. We’re all fish in the ocean, who don’t know how to factor in the movement and pressure of water. But then it caught on, because it was the only thing that made the math work.”

“NNYES,” Papyrus comments a little peevishly, over-enunciating. “…THE _MATH_. I’VE HEARD OF HER.”

That actually gets you to smother a snort in Papyrus’s shoulderpads. That’s the forbearance of someone who’s heard some extended love letters disguised as informational lectures to symmetry, prime numbers, and possibly exponents on more than one occasion.

“Anyways,” you continue faintly. “um, they started building big things to smash particles together and record the results. They wanted to see if they could um. Make a piece of the Higgs field change so they could measure it. Sort of like...if it really was an ocean, this would be a drop of it? Without actually being separate.”

“DID IT WORK?”

“Yep,” you say, feeling him pick up the pace of his climbing a little. “They found definitive evidence of the Higgs boson in 201X.”

You manage to deepen your breathing a little, although slowing it is proving a bit more challenging. You should talk some more.

“Um. But. Turns out even finding it didn’t explain everything. I mean. It’s the reason atoms can exist. It’s the reason that almost all particles that have mass, um. Have it. But there’s a few exceptions, like black holes and dark matter. And that’s when people knew there were other Higgs-like fields that would have to account for it.”

“SO DOES THAT ACTUALLY HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH MAGIC? AFTER ALL, IT DIDN’T EXIST FOR YOU UNTIL...” he makes a short, choking little noise for unknown (unknowable?) reasons. “...RECENTLY,” he finishes, as if he’s been about to say something else.

Like saying it would be bad luck or something.

“Um. Just the way I conceptualize it, I think? I haven’t actually talked with anyone about it.”

“WELL. I’M ALWAYS GLAD TO BE OF USE AS A SOUNDING BOARD AND EARLESS RECEPTACLE FOR SELF-INDULGENT NAVEL-GAZING. WHICH I WILL REITERATE I ALSO LACK.”

He’s so weird and bitchy. Integrity’s a hell of a drug.

“This was your idea,” you point out.

“ONE OF MY BETTER ONES, YES.” He’s smug now.

“I love you, Papyrus.”

He gifts you with his most long-suffering sigh.

“OF COURSE YOU DO, AND IT’S MUTUAL. WE’RE MORE THAN HALFWAY THERE NOW, BUT THIS NEXT BIT IS A LITTLE TRICKIER.”

You make a wordless, nauseated moan.

“LET’S MAKE A DEAL,” Papyrus adds hurriedly. “YOU KEEP THE CONTENTS OF YOUR STOMACH PRECISELY WHERE THEY ARE, AND I’LL EXPLAIN WHAT A RESET IS NOW THAT THEY CAN’T HAPPEN ANYMORE.”

“I’ll try,” you say faintly.

“I BELIEVE IN YOU,” Papyrus encourages fervently. “I _KNOW_ YOU CAN DO IT. OKAY….OKAY. REMEMBER THE STATE YOU WERE IN WHEN I FIRST MET YOU?”

“That’s not helping _the stomach_ , Papyrus,” you wail faintly as he slides down several feet rather abruptly.

“I…OKAY. SO. FRISK DOES WHAT YOU DID TO YOURSELF. BUT THEY DO IT TO EVERYTHING AT ONCE, AND PUT IT EXACTLY WHERE IT GOES.”

“What?” you say weakly.

“HEY PULL THE OPPOSITE OF EVERYTHING HERE PHYSICALLY. BOTH ARE ANNIHILATED AS SOON AS THEY OCCUPY THE SAME SPACE. LIKE PARTICLES AND ANTIPARTICLES EXCEPT...UM. NOT...PARTICLES? AT LEAST NOT ALL OF IT?”

“I thought your brother was the physicist,” you pant, trying to not panic, pee or faint.

“DEFINITELY _DON’T_ PEE. CONSIDER IT A HARD LIMIT. WHO DO YOU THINK EXPLAINED IT TO ME?”

“Oh.” You swallow reflexively. “But…isn’t annihilation kind of a...it doesn’t work that way in physics, right? There’s a byproduct-”

“THERE’S A BYPRODUCT WHEN FRISK ANNIHILATES,” Papyrus explains tersely. “TIME. THAT’S WHY IT WORKED DIFFERENTLY IN THE UNDERGROUND.”

“Tha-”

“THERE AREN’T _ONLY_ PARTICLES,” Papyrus grunts roughly, finally managing to gain some purchase on the edge of the hole. “ANNIHILATING MAGIC DOES SOMETHING ELSE, BECAUSE IT INTERACTS OUTSIDE OF TIME.”

“Are...you saying magic interacts with other timelines?”

“UNDER CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES,” he groans, then sort of lies down on his side like a tipped cow while he waits for you to be able to uncurl your fingers. They’re locked up so tight you think they might just be stuck that way forever. “MOSTLY _SOUL_ KINDS OF CIRCUMSTANCES. YOU...KNOW HOW THAT WORKS, OF COURSE.”

You don’t actually; you also realize the reason he’s not helping you let go is because his hands are bare, and his gloves are still just lying on the ground around here somewhere. And whatever Papyrus is feeling right now he’d rather keep to himself.

“THE FRISK SITUATION HASN’T CHANGED,” Papyrus informs you tightly. “WE’LL. WE’LL GET THERE WHEN WE GET THERE.”

He’s afraid.

“THAT’S NOT EXACTLY UNPRECEDENTED,” he comments defensively. “ALTHOUGH I MUST ADMIT MY HANDS HAVE NEVER BEEN QUITE THIS DIRTY, AND I MAY DECIDE TO COMPOSE A GYFTMAS POEM TO THE DISINFECTING WET WIPES CURRENTLY RESIDING UNHELPFULLY IN THE GLOVE COMPARTMENT OF MY BEAUTIFUL CAR. ALONG WITH, OF COURSE, _GLOVES._ ”

Wow. Papyrus is actually...he’s _tired_. Whoa.

“I’M JUST HUNGRY,” he gripes. He sounds pretty hungry for the gloves, too.

“I’m trying to let go,” you protest. “My joints don’t always cooperate, remember?”

“I BELIEVE IN YOU,” Papyrus urges. “I’D GO LIKE THIS IF I DIDN’T TAKE VEHICULAR SAFETY SO SERIOUSLY. WOULD IT HELP IF I PULL?”

You sigh. There really hasn’t been much progress.

“Go ahead,” you say, resigned. “I’ve got my pills.”

“OH. WAIT. I...ANOTHER SOLUTION HAS PRESENTED ITSELF.”

You see that he’s produced a pair of scissors from...somewhere.

“Awww, Papyrus...you don’t have to-”

He’s already snipping a neat circle out of his clothing around your clenched fist. He does the other one quickly, then rolls and stands in one smooth motion.

“I’LL BE RIGHT BACK,” he says, already striding away to his car. “I’LL COME BACK,” he reiterates in a louder yell, protesting as you do your best to roll to your feet with locked hands and hips, and knees made of water. You manage eventually, and toddle towards the car as Papyrus scrubs violently at his filthy phalanges with the wipes, clacking as he shudders in disgust.

“I WOULD HAVE _GOTTEN_ YOU,” he mutters peevishly ‘under his breath’, stuffing the used wipes into a helpful little zipper-seal bag as you collapse slightly agains the side of his car. “DIOS _MIO_ , _nunca_ en _mi_ vida _he_ visto TAL pinche _MACH_ _ISM_ _O_.”

That surprises a laugh right out of you despite the pain you’re in. He tugs on a pair of (non-matching!) gloves, then opens the door of his convertible for you, considering you’re still holding a handful of severed cloth in both your locked up hands. You sit with a groan, and Papyrus leaps over the door like a 1980’s action star instead of opening it.

Then he just sits there, looking at your poor, abused knuckles as they continue to swell.

You meet each others’ gaze slowly.

“IF YOU _EVER_ BREATHE A WORD OF THIS TO SANS, I’M DIVORCING YOU.”

You have no idea what he’s talking about. “Okay,” you agree solemnly.

Papyrus produces his monster phone, then pulls a bottle of ketchup out of it.

“Oh shiiiit,” you whisper, awed. “Chug, chug...” You actually pump your inflammation-locked fists a moment before wincing.

“SHUT UP,” he barks, then tips the contents very efficiently between his teeth, shaking it with a funny little blorp-guzzling sound. He makes it disappear in less than half the time it takes his brother.

“UGH,” he chokes, shuddering hard enough to clack as he throws the bottle behind him without looking. You narrow your eyes at the sky, but...nope, it’s gone. Papyrus has been effectively refreshed. “THAT’S WHAT I GET FOR ONLY KEEPING EMERGENCY RATIONS FOR-EH, WHATEVER. STAY STILL.” He takes your curled, puffy-painful hands into his impossibly long, gloved phalanges; you moan embarrassingly loud as something hot, healthy, and soothing flows right into your bones.

“WOWIE,” he comments needlessly. “IT’S A GOOD THING METTATON ISN’T HERE TO RECORD THAT AS A SOUND EFFECT FOR ONE OF HIS _ARTHOUSE_ FILMS.”

“Bite my bag, Paps,” you grunt through your teeth, trying not to moan again as sweat-mangled wads of cloth finally fall free. “Ohhhh _my god_ ,” you blurt breathily, finally realizing something unbelievably weird at the worst possible moment. “This is _pushed magic_ , isn’t it?” Papyrus’s whole skull goes iridescent salmon-pink. “That’s how monsters heal, you just push it in my _body_ instead of-”

“HAVE I EVER TOLD YOU YOUR MOUTH IS AS DIRTY AS MY HANDS WERE A FEW MINUTES AGO?” he interrupts desperately.

“So is yours,” you sigh, your eyelids starting to list as you tilt your head back with relief. “You just don’t do it around Sans.”

“THAT’S BECAUSE MY BROTHER IS AN UNSULLIED INNOCENT WHO HAS NEVER USED A CURSE WORD IN HIS LIFE AND DOESN’T KNOW WHAT SEX IS,” he says, making you snort helplessly. “NOW IF YOU’RE DONE MAKING BEDROOM NOISES AND ACCURATE BUT UNCOMFORTABLE OBSERVATIONS, CAN WE _PLEASE_ GET BUCKLED UP AND SEE WHAT THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF OUR LIVES IS GOING TO BE LIKE? I HAVE CONCERNS I WOULD LIKE TO ALLEVIATE, AND SANS HASN’T BEEN CHECKING LIKE HE SHOULD.”

You start crying uncontrollably as you push the buckle into the clasp. Papyrus angles his sockets at you sheepishly and blushes like a midnight sunset as he starts the car. You’d reassure him that his tactlessness probably has relatively little to do with your trauma-response weeping if you weren’t sobbing too hard to talk.

Frisk is kind of The Worst, but you also love them like they’re your own kid or something and you extremely _don’t_ want them to die. And it had been...that looked… really bad. You don’t know how Sans and Toriel could put that back together into a human body. You’re scared shitless for about ten different reasons, and you don’t know how or why the annihilation didn’t happen like it was supposed to.

“THERE ARE TISSUES IN MY PHONE,” Papyrus says uncomfortably after noticing how much snot you’re just kind of...holding. “OR YOU COULD DO THAT,” he adds weakly as you use one of the sweaty, ragged circles of cloth that used to be part of his clothing to put your snot in instead.

“Why didn’t we get annihilated?” you manage to croak after a little while of driving over...hill and dale...and...um, around the… okay. You just shut your eyes, but not before you see Papyrus flinch slightly.

“WE…” he says a little breathlessly; you feel guilty. “WE STILL EXIST! THAT’S!! HARD TO ARGUE WITH!”

“Sorry,” you add, then let your breath hitch all over the place for a good thirty seconds before you’re able to continue. It’d be funny as hell if you weren’t a few ounces of Papyrus’s body inserted into your joints shy of physically going into shock.

“It’s been a really hard day,” you wail, and yeah. Wow. You do not have your shit together at all.

“IT HAS BEEN… UNUSUALLY CHALLENGING!! IN SEVERAL DISTURBINGLY INTERESTING WAYS,” he admits in the distinct tones of someone who may have no shit, but if he did it would most certainly _not_ be together. “BUT! WE ARE _UP TO_ THE CHALLENGE! WE...ACCEPT THIS CHALLENGER! OF A DAY!!” He makes a noise that isn’t a laugh, or anything else, really. Just a noise.

“… I’M GOING TO LET SANS EXPLAIN IT TO YOU,” he adds loud and shaky after a little longer. “I’M FAR TOO BUSY DRIVING. YES.”

There’s something counterintuitively reassuring about Papyrus’s hysteria. It makes you feel better about yourself, and a lot less guilt for having no tact either. It’s like you both upset and reassure each other in equal measure or something, and it’s good to be with someone you care about this much at such a trying time. You don’t manage to entirely stop crying, but you do become more aware of your surroundings as you make your way at about 20 miles per hour to...Toriel’s house, you assume. Or wherever Toriel, Sans, and Frisk are. You didn’t ask, and it feels like way too much work to at this point.

The first time Papyrus drives over a spot where the ground isn’t, you tell yourself it’s just some kind of misunderstanding, or your depth perception ceasing to function for five seconds.

You’ve been trying very hard to not think about the fact that this side of Mt Ebott doesn’t actually _have_ any roads.

It’s a little harder to ignore it when he drives up a tree, though.

“Papyrus,” you hear yourself say faintly. “is this a special car?”

“OF COURSE NOT,” he scoffs absently, flicking his turn signal and looking back over his shoulder. He adjusts the rear view mirror, and rubs his long mandible with gloved phalanges self-consciously.

“I’M JUST AN EXCELLENT DRIVER.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the little rule I decided on for this story is if I can explain it effectively to my sibling in less than five minutes, I’m “allowed” to write it in. Most of the mathematical principles didn’t make the cut, although I promise you the properties I assigned to the continuum ‘magic’ parse with everything else I put in here. By which I mean the way actual quantum mechanics work. It has to do with something that is infinitely divisible having an exact numerical corresponding part for every particle in existence, and then you just slap some good ol particle collision shits right on there and blammo you got an annihilated universe.  
> Especially if a soul as determined as Charisk’s is exerting its influence on magic as a whole in an unnaturally ultradense state!  
> If you’re curious about the exact mechanics of an annihilation on that scale, if this happened due to an ultradense state change in the Higgs field here’s an Italian dude to explain it to you:  
> (link is to the transcript which is a fairly quick read!) https://www.ted.com/talks/gian_giudice_why_our_universe_might_exist_on_a_knife_edge/transcript#t-295315
> 
> Why my joke from the beginning is(n’t) funny/YOU’RE WELCOME:
> 
> The Higgs particle represents a new form of matter, which had been widely anticipated for decades but had never been seen.  
> Early in the 20th century, physicists realized that particles, in addition to their mass and electric charge, have a third defining feature: their spin. But unlike a child’s top, a particle’s spin is an intrinsic feature that doesn’t change; it doesn’t speed up or slow down over time.  
> Electrons and quarks all have the same spin value, while the spin of photons—particles of light—is twice that of electrons and quarks.  
> The equations describing the Higgs particle showed that—unlike any other fundamental particle species—it should have no spin at all. Data from the Large Hadron Collider have now confirmed this.  
> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-the-higgs-boson-was-found-4723520/
> 
> Particles are cool because you can make them fight each other like Pokemon.  
> particle annihilation explained by wiggly lines: http://scipp.ucsc.edu/outreach/23FeynmanDiagrams.pdf


	69. whoopsie daisy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [injury, illness, mild body horror, aftermath of an assumed suicide attempt]  
> I had planned to post the original version of “Accident Prone”, a Jawbreaker song. I uh. Had that album. A long time ago. Then I thought you all might actually enjoy Julien Baker’s piano-and-vocal cover? It’s a moderately poignant and goosebumpy time.  
> https://youtu.be/9uxT0z-TDEk

You and Sans stand at his inaccessible crag on the face of Mt Ebbot, and he’s watching something drifting upwards and outwards that you can’t see.

“it’s been like this ever since the barrier came down,” he says again quietly. “i know you can’t see it, but….” His face is strange and soft. “s’magic, space, an’ time coming outta there. i can’t see that last one, either...can see where it _isn’t_ , though.”

He sighs heavily.

“tried over and over to figure out how much had ta come out… how long it’d be til it wouldn’t work anymore.” He glances at you. “there’s a reason frisk’s never left ebott. doesn’t work so good once they get out too far, they found out. might be why the farther i go out, the more, uh. tired? doing some a the stuff i do makes me.”

Phalanges appear to rasp over the top of his skull, then slip back in his pocket. His hands don’t seem to have anything to say right now, but for him keeping them under wraps is a force of habit.

“How did you finally solve it?”

He turns his skull towards you with a bone-weary grin.

“i didn’t.”

Sans rummages in his pocket for longer than usual, then pulls out a fist. He turns it up and when he uncurls his fingers, there’s a piece of wadded up cloth paper that looks even more abused than the others he’s shown you. Like he’s been rubbing it for a long time, so long it’s been worried into a fuzzy little wad.

He gives it to you, and when you open it up it’s a smallish square covered in lines and symbols. A few numbers, some letters.

“found it in the machine,” he says hoarsely. “dunno how the fuck he figured it out, but...if he’s me, i gotta trust it. glad i did, but...”

Oh. Oh shit.

“’s how long from the day the barrier broke til frisk couldn’t kill the timeline anymore.” He makes a short noise, not a laugh. Not really anything else either. Just a noise. “well. it’s what i needed to figure _out_ how long that’d be.”

He’s silent and still, looking at nothing for about two minutes.

“answer’s thirteen years, three months, fifteen days, twelve hours, ten minutes, twenty-seven seconds.”

You look at him blankly, give your head a little shake. His eye lights are dim and small; he closes his sockets and exhales unevenly.

“’s not for three more days. guess i wanted a big margin, huh? better late than early.” He shakes all over for a minute, controls his breathing again before opening his sockets back up to stare at you. “part a me’s still waiting for all a this to jus’…”

He trails off like his batteries ran out.

You and he had decided to take a break from Frisk’s bedside; almost everyone else is still there although they haven’t been the whole time. Well, all except Toriel. She refuses to leave Frisk (other than Sans finally convincing her the blood and filth ground into her fur stank, so she allowed him to shortcut her to Grillby’s to get a “hug”. The whole ordeal had taken less than ten seconds, but she still looked terrified when she’d returned), so everyone’s been making sure she eats and moves around at least a little, although no one’s managed to get her to sleep so far.

Sans either. That’s a little bit more of an issue.

“I don’t….it seems like it shouldn’t work that way,” You say slowly. “Time and space are like...forces; _ideas_ , not substances. They’re the framework that affect substances, you know? I can’t imagine what you’re seeing right now.”

Sans huffs softly, then takes your arms so you can help each other sit down. He’d taken out one of the cushions he keeps in his phone for circumstances precisely like these when you weren’t paying attention. Carefully and slowly, you both make your way to a seated position. You look down at the city, he looks up at the spacetime hemorrhaging out of a mountain.

“doubt that’s how they were before this broke loose,” he comments wryly, “but maybe being trapped in there with us and all that magic…” He sighs. “you could think of it like a big weight getting lighter, or a...bend coming out of a piece a wire, maybe?”

“I liked the first one better.”

Sans gives you a sad, exhausted smile.

“frisk might still be able to LOAD, but i don’t think they have.”

Able to _theoretically_ , but not _able_ to due to...um. Their current condition.

“Is that why you work so much?” you say instead. “Because once this dissipates you might not be able to make those things anymore?”

“mm...i think i’ll always be able to, jus’...not as much, maybe?” He smiles absently, still watching the drifts in the air. “i can shortcut on the other side a the world, jus’ not much farther than i can walk in ten seconds. still real useful, even if it makes me tired after a few.”

“I still don’t get why what’s coming out of there makes it easier.”

He frowns gently, still watching the bubble burst.

“cause eating’s a pain in my ass,” he says eventually, “and everything i am...s’jus’ _one_.”

You check him; til now you’ve kind of been ignoring it.

**sans.**

**HP: 1**

**AT: 1**

**DEF: 1**

*** There was time now.**

“What does it say when you check me?” you ask quietly. He...doesn’t flinch, but his face does something. He lets your hands go and puts his up in front of his chest.

“not sure if i can say it right,” he says quietly aloud, and with his soul’s intent behind it you can understand him over the wind. It works a little when he signs his language; not at all when he speaks it.

Because he has a speech impediment.

His phalanges move slow and careful.

**Reader**

**HP: 8**

**AT: 20**

**DEF: 0**

*** the Other Glass Cannon. [(1rr3plac3[abl3])+(1rr3[parabl3])].**

You sigh, narrow your eyes at him suspiciously. It’s not about the HP, since you know that changed about six months ago.

“What did it say the day before yesterday?”

A rueful smile; a sidelong glance. A ghost of chill; the earthy tang of ponderosa pine.

 ***** **[both[until[a [the promise is]candle lit] you] end].**

"Two weeks ago?" You whisper breathlessly.

***  if you tell them Everything you’ll lose it.**

You feel the muscles in your face draw taut.

“What the fuuuuuuck.”

He’s quiet for a long time; he wipes his face with his sleeve.

“papyrus isn’t the only one who thinks about that stuff,” he begins quietly after a while. “got my own ideas, too. think it’s a place we can leave a hint if we really need to. dunno why, but….jus’ a feeling. don’t know for sure.”

His face goes back to the sad, lost look that’s been creeping over him by default ever since you and Papyrus had arrived at Toriel’s. Where you had come in to see them holding their child’s broken body together desperately, Toriel grimacing and sweating, tugging the leg straight again bit by bit, pushing at it like clay. Sans holding the pressure with one hand, tipping bottles of whatever he had into the spot in their swollen, battered face where their mouth ended up with the other.

Papyrus rushed right in, holding something together with his hands in a way that made you feel sick and dizzy, made you wander over to where the bloody wreckage of their clothing lay nearby, although a few shreds still clung to their upper body. You gathered it up, disposed of it. brought back some water...a towel. Soemthing. Vulkin had arrived shortly after Toriel asked you to call her, added fire magic even more intense than Toriel’s to the mix to fuse some bits back on, and do...something… to help their soul...something.

You mostly mostly kept your eyes averted and brought them whatever they needed, took away what they asked to you take, and called who they requested you call.

Helping.

Helpless.

“We can go back now,” you tell Sans.

He slumps, relieved.

***

“Shouldn’t Toriel be here?” you ask hesitantly.

Alphys gives you a look that comes off kindly and pitiless at the same time. You feel like you’ve seen that look before. “Toriel already knows everything I have to say,” she explains gently. “She doesn’t want to hear any of it.”

Sans sighs unsteadily; you see his sleeve-wrapped fist wipe his face out of the corner of your eye, and you scoot a little closer to him.

Alphys hands him a sheaf of stiffened cloth-paper; Sans stills his hands and looks. Reads. Makes a weird little grunt.

“The red is gone,” Alphys signs at you decisively. “They’re...back to their true trait, but...”

You blink. “Can I ask what it is?”

“Perseverance,” Alphys says with an ironic twist to her lips. “But it’s unusually strong.”

“What does that mean exactly?”

“Exactly?” She raises an eyebrow. “It means that the codeout for p-13457 is at least double the nearest vector. Since that doesn’t mean anything to you, I’ll let you know it’s more purple than usual.”

“Touché,” you say aloud with a self-deprecating eyeroll. “But why was it red before?”

“Determination is red,” Alphys says, her nictitating membranes coming up to hood her gelid eyes protectively. “there was so much...it obscured everything else about their soul, other than the fact that there was an additional...piece, stuck in there like a...splinter? As far as I can tell that’s gone or absorbed now, and the wound is gone.”

“...Wound?” You gesture hesitantly.

“Chara’s soul was fractured in a way it shouldn’t have been able to have been, because of...how they died(didn’t die),” Alphys signs close to her chest. You realize belatedly that this isn’t ASL. “That kind of determination...” she sighs. “They never stopped making it, because the ‘wound’ never stopped ‘bleeding’,” she elaborates uncomfortably.

“Alphys,” you say aloud, then gesture, “what _is_ determination, really?”

“Determination is the reason it’s harder for humans to lie down and die (go away/go back) than it is for monsters,” she says reluctantly. Humans can’t just...hold their breath and end it right there. They have to stop eating, or...stop drinking, make themselves sick in some way, and your bodies have all these failsafes built in to make it even harder. When something wounds a human soul, it produces determination to...hmm. To allow _time_ for the wound to be dealt with.”

You frown. “But that’s just how our bodies work,” you point out, baffled. “What does the _determination_ do?”

“You’ve got it the wrong way around. It’s the metaphysical reason _for_ all of those physical things. The way your body works is the physical manifestation of determination, and it’s not just that it’s hard to die. There’s a lot of things… like why mothers can suddenly lift cars off their children they never could otherwise, and why...so many of the impossible things humans do. It’s the source of that.”

You stare.

“Your body is a physical matrix suspended _between_ your soul, like a web,” Alphys explains. “Your soul is the reason your body exists, why does the things it does.”

“But...” you whisper aloud.

“Your soul affects magic, because it can speak to it in ways your body can’t.” She glances over at Sans, he’s still reading. “Sans’s body actually works the same as yours does in that regard. Not like mine, or Toriel’s. There's a lesser degree of integration and communication, and his physical bits are truly _physical_ the way your bits are.” She smiles weakly, but you can tell it’s meant to be reassuring. “He just has very, um. Few of them.”

Your mouth is dry.

“How many?” you ask, even though you’re frightened of what the answer might be.

You have a bad feeling you might already know.

“1,” she says. “Papyrus has 680, for comparison.”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” you flail out sloppily. Alphys seems upset that she’s upsetting you, doesn’t know why you’re bothered. Sans just keeps reading Frisk’s soul information, hand fisted loosely in the front of his hoodie. It tightens a moment, then relaxes. “Why do I only have eight, when I have..billions?? Why did I have ten before?”

“8 what?” she asks, baffled.

“HoPe!” you cry aloud along with your gestures. The word that comes out isn’t the one you were expecting. Sans finally looks up, the points in his sockets flickering with dismay when he sees how upset you are.

“alphie...” he says calmly. Sans reaches out, rubs your arm. “doesn’t work the same for humans, ok? it’s not measuring the same, uh. stuff. k?”

You sit for a moment, still and quiet while a few things rearrange themselves in your head. Priorities, feelings, decisions.

“I’m okay,” you say calmly after an amount of time.

“see?” Sans says quietly. The papers are gone, you’re not sure where. “they jus’ needed a sec. like me sometimes.”

Alphys looks sweatily relieved.

“Sorry,” you add. “Are _you_ okay?”

“I’m f-fine,” she whispers.

“Why did Frisk’s soul heal, though? Did it have to do with the time running out?”

Alphys shakes her head solemnly.

“What _I_ believe is that the piece of Chara’s soul finally went back to the rest of it. It closed the wound,” she gestures with finality.

“But...” That really sucks. “Flowey had to die in order to heal Frisk?”

“I don’t know anything about ‘had to’”, she says reasonably enough. “That’s just what _did_ happen.”

“So… what does this mean for Frisk? As a person?”

“Frisk is the same as they’ve always been, except they’re not wounded anymore. No one knows what Frisk was like before they fell, not even Frisk. They don’t remember anything. Their soul’s still a little odd with that unusual resonance and the strong color, but otherwise? Nothing’s wrong with it.”

You cover your face with you sleeves, give yourself a minute. Then you pull your hands down, finally ask.

“Why won’t they wake up?”

Alphys face sags in defeat.

“I don’t know,” she twitches out. “They should have by now.”

Sans just sits there, looking at nothing in particular.

***

Mettaton shows up again. He does the same thing he always does, which is stare up or down at Frisk silently for a while, go to another room with Papyrus, whisper in a few ears, and then he leaves.

After an hour, the flowers, food, and people show up again. The latter do what they came to do, then leave.

Papyrus complains vehemently about the quality, color, and size of the arrangements; he derides and denigrates the taste, texture, and preparation of the food. He pays the people at least three additional times. Each. In G. Then he picks up his brother, who pretends to sleep even though he can’t, and carries him around Toriel’s kitchen for an hour or two while he tries to cook “something better”.

Everyone once in a while he manages to produce something.

Sans always eats it.

He won’t eat anything else.

***

“In a lot of ways it’s more like learning a new language than anything else.”

Angie gives you an extremely dubious look; you exhale slow and soft.

“Like... you have all these words that describe concepts you might not be used to. And the more you speak it...the more the way you see things and think about them...change. Like...I don’t know. An eggplant.”

She snorts. “You’ve lost your mind.”

“Well, yeah. That happened a while ago. But that doesn’t change the fact that if I call it an _aubergine_ , it just sounds _fancier_. But it’s the exact same fucking thing.”

Nattie and Shonda are keeping Sans’s “place” in the bed warm for him while he’s been kidnapped by Papyrus for his Kitchen Thing again. They lie on the opposite side of Frisk than Toriel, who’s up on an elbow watching the way the bruises on Frisk’s face change colors as they heal, as bright and as faded as autumn leaves.

“Will you show me how to make snail pies?” Nattie asks, their voice unaccustomedly solemn. Not somber, and not actually quiet, but not yelling or strident. Shonda gives them a little side hug, and sighs as she reads something on her viewer with her free arm.

“Once Frisk has recovered,” Toriel answers eventually. She always answers when the children ask. Almost always when Sans does, because she can’t leave a punchline hanging no matter how crushed by grief she is. It’s how he’s kept her going through worse times than even this, after all.

With everyone else it’s kind of a crapshoot.

“Are you saying that getting in touch with your soul is like...talking to yourself?” Angie tries.

“Sort of? But not with the same implication it would have when we say it. Usually people talking to themselves is seen as a negative thing. This is more like… I don’t know. Maybe how a therapist would do it? But it’s just you, doing that for yourself.”

MK has gotten as far as the door to this room twice so far before breaking down.

They’re at Grillby’s.

They’re Snowdin’s kid, and they have a fine selection of shoulders to lean on, arms to hug them, hands to feed them, and flaming bartenders to help them find their courage when they’re ready.

“Being your own therapist doesn’t seem like a good thing,” Angie retorts, although her argumentativeness is oddly soothing. Feels normal.

“There are worse ways to go about it,” you say with a hint of amused bitterness in your voice. She hadn’t been old enough to remember Mom ordering the books, but she remembers bricking in the windows with them when the light got to be too much for your mother’s watery chemo-and-radiation-blasted eyes.

You hear the yelling go on for a while before Undyne manages to make it into the room, but once she does, she gives everyone a toothy, surprisingly quiet grin. She walks up to the bed wordlessly, looks down for a few minutes.

Nattie and Shonda raise their arms in silent unison. Undyne picks them both up, holds them, then lies down as smoothly as she can.

Toriel doesn’t bark a correction, so she must have finally managed to get the knack of not joggling the bed too much.

“Why does everyone get quiet in here?” Angie asks quietly. “I mean, Frisk can’t hear…? And they’re..” she clears her throat.

“Because Toriel is tired,” you say without really thinking about it, “and she was alone for a long, long time.”

“That is true,” Toriel says, also quietly. “I am not alone anymore.”

“I thought Frisk was supposed to be smelly by now,” Undyne says, appropos of nothing.

“Of course they’re not,” Toriel says distractedly. “I clean then with fire magic every few hours.”

“Oh,” Undyne replies, and apparently her sedentary conversational abilities are at an end. She stays lying down as long as she can bear it, then hops up and replaces the children while Toriel frowns and makes the little growling noise, her goat lips pressed together firmly. Undyne sweats apologetically, then shoots you a desperate glance.

“Papyrus first,” you gesture.

She nods in relief and strides out of the room, hollering as soon as she clears the threshold.

“Undyne is always refreshing,” Toriel says after a few minutes. She sounds like she’s sleepwalking.

Speaking of which, the kids relinquish their place next to Frisk once Papyrus returns to deliver his brother into it, carrying a plate of something that might be pancakes.

They’re _really_ orange.

“UNDYNE APPEARS TO HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW JOGGING LAPS WORKS,” Papyrus announces to the room at large. “IF...I WILL BE, WITH, I AM-”

He turns on his heel with a weird little huff, and goes off to let Undyne run the fear off of him in circles like he’s an under-exercised Dog.

There are the little pallets like the ones from gyftmas strewn about here and there on the floor. The kids separate and go sprawl on them, but after a few minutes Nattie comes and lifts their arms up at you. You surreptitiously fish out a pill, take it, then lift them into your lap with a grunt of “effort”.

Ange is asleep on the pallet next to you.

Sans tells a few jokes, manages to get Toriel to provide the other half of at least four. She grabs his hand when he goes to feed Frisk a bite of his pancakes, brings it to her own mouth first.

“Sans!” she coughs and splutters. She sounds more awake than she has for the last 15 hours. “That is _far_ too spicy for a recovering child!” A child that had managed to keep growing under her loving care until they actually stand within a foot of her towering height, and manages to nearly meet her prodigious bulk. A child that the universe is trying to take away from her, yet again.

Another child who, to the best of her knowledge, has tried to hasten their own departure.

Her child.

Yet again.

“figured it might get em antsy ta wake up,” Sans says mildly. You don’t know if he’s found a way to explain to her that it’s a little more complicated than that, although not by much. You doubt it.

Toriel sighs in what sounds like exasperation, but her face slowly collapses into remorse, then softens. She glances at the wall, nods infinitesimally.

It’s not like it can hurt.

Sans sticks a forkful of pancakes into Frisk’s swollen, slitlike mouth, using a careful but casual fingertip to open it. He gently tips their chin up, doesn’t react to their lack of response.

“s’good. right, kiddo?” he says quietly. “...heh.”

Papyrus comes back eventually and bustles around elsewhere in the house, then comes back in and sits against a wall with a book. It’s...oh, it’s the… “book”. Fluffy Bunny. He looks at it with unaccustomed patience, seeming calmer than before Undyne took him jogging. Every once in a while, he moves his hand above the pages as if he’s manipulating something you can’t see.

You suppose he is.

Undyne and Alphys’s chattering can be heard here and there, but then you hear the loud, upbeat anime opening theme in a nearby bedroom starting.

After about fifteen minutes, every monster in the room relaxes slightly. Papyrus’s shoulders alone lower a good three inches.

Sans just exists, half-lying and half-sitting next to his inexplicably unconscious and slowly healing child, eyes shut and hands motionless. His grin doesn’t falter.

Every 20 minutes or so, he lifts another bite of pancakes to his mouth.

He eats until they’re gone.

***

When there’s still no change by later on that evening, you finally convince Sans to come with you long enough to at least try and see if being in your bed with you will manage to get him to sleep.

Astoundingly, it works.

His night terror wakes you up at about three am, the little bone ball he makes of himself shaking the whole bed as he shoves his tiny fists up through the space in his mandible, like he’s trying to punch into his skull from the roof of his mouth.

You rub your eye sadly. It just keeps going, and you make your decision eventually. The episode continues past the time you decided on, and you roll over and lean down so you can take the case out from under the bed.

Grillby gave it to you a few months back, but this is only the second time you’ve done this.

You did eventually figure out what Sans saying, or at least part of it. His impediment prevents his soul from doing whatever it is that makes you understand when he speaks this language aloud...it certainly doesn’t prevent you from learning bits by repetition.

What Sans is saying is his own name over and over in what you’ve eventually realized is a calm tone, despite the odd sounds he’s producing. There are other things too sometimes. The sick, cold feeling that comes over you when he says them doesn’t lessen over time.

“comic sans,” he says in dissonant, glitch-steady tones, fists trying to shove the words back in, or away….tear them out, maybe? “sans…comic sans (serif) m(icro)s(oft)…sans. ( ~~why do i do this~~ ~~)~~ , comic sans?”

Sans doesn’t have night terrors all the time, but they happen more often when he’s stressed out, sleep deprived, or upset. After the whole remembering thing they’d increased in frequency for a week or two, then ebbed back to being rare sooner than you would have expected, considering how fucked up everything else was. After his conversation and altercation with Frisk on gyftmas, they’d happened three nights in a row once you’d left Toriel’s. Sans got so wobbly and exhaustion-sick he’d had to spend 40 hours heal-sleeping with Papyrus, called back early by someone from being “Out”. As soon as he went back to bed with you, he’d had another one that put him down for an additional day curled up facing the wall in his own bed.

At a loss and exhausted, you finally drummed up your courage to ask Grillby about it. Instead of answering, he’d asked you to come to his room with him; you’d followed him nervously, not really knowing what to expect. He’d been his usual combination of direct and oblique, but considering what exactly he ended up explaining, you were impressed with his sensitivity.

After a few centuries of watching over someone with several sleep disorders attempting to do so, you start to notice patterns. The night terrors always ended the same way, regardless of severity and duration. After even longer, eventually the magic Sans shed during his night terrors had touched Grillby by accident, and that’s when he realized what ended them. It was a matter of time before he asked Sans if he thought it was possible that it happening sooner might make the episode end as well, and how he might feel about having help doing that at some point. Eventually Sans thought it might be worth a try, and it turned out that it worked for the worst of them.

He’s given you this case, and told you to give it to Sans. That he would give it back to you and tell you you could use it if he ever became comfortable with the idea. Sans had taken the case from you wordlessly, then just...left for a while. He hadn’t mentioned it again until the day he gave it back to you.

Two days after you’d let him watch your soul while you got each other off thinking about the things that make you feel sick, that make you come hard and sharp like a broken neck. When you’d helped each other feel better afterwards, sharing his magic and reminding each other that sometimes bodies just do things, and it’s not your fault or his. When you’d showed him beyond doubt that your wound is different, and that it’s the same.

Sans told you only Grillby and Alphys have a case like this, and that if you use it you have to tell him once he’s lucid that you did. That you shouldn’t use it all the time, and giving it to you means he trusts your judgement on whether or not it’s necessary. He makes sure Grillby told you what to do and asks you to tell him too, just to make sure. It embarrassed him to hear it, you could tell, but you were frank and upfront about it. He’d sat there for a while, then eventually he gave you the case and told you explicitly that he trusts you to decide when and if to use it.

Grillby had also told you that sometimes he wakes up after, although usually he doesn’t. That he’s not really awake when he does, and that he might get scared or upset.

“sans. comic sans… ( ~~tell me~~ ), sans.”

You open the case and take out the soft, fluffy towel. You lay it over his hips, then tuck it under him gently as well. He went to sleep without any clothes on, so you don’t have to do anything else to reach down and gently take his pubis between your curled index finger and thumb. He’s balled up so tight you have to move his ankle a little to get to it, but once you do you very, _very_ lightly rub the broad side of your thumb along the tight magic where the two halves of his pubic bones meet.

Sans’s night terrors can last for hours, and when he wakes up the pain is somewhere between excruciating and a lingering sour headache that can go on for a day or two. At their worst, he often needs healing. They don’t end until his magic sheds out, and this makes that happen. It’s not an orgasm, but you think it’s probably still some kind of sexual release.

It makes more sense now that he avoided you for two weeks after waking you up with one toward the beginning of your relationship, having you call his brother and watch him finish up his wet nightmare in a giant wad of blankets. Held by a sibling desperate to help despite being unable to, and just as desperate to make sure that his shed magic didn’t touch him in any way, shape, or form. Listening to him say his own name, say things he probably feels like are dirty or perverted. Even though they're not, and even though you can’t understand them anyways. Back then you’d been stupid enough to ask Papyrus if he knew what his brother was saying, so he’d lied and told you he doesn’t.

After you’d remembered part of their childhood for them, the letter he’d given you with the cinnamon bunnies had briefly read

HIS NAME.

MEDICAL THINGS.

HE REMEMBERS WHAT HE SAYS. IF YOU UNDERSTAND, DON’T.

Sans stops talking as soon as you start, and it’s already a little wet with his magic. He doesn’t do anything, just goes still and quiet. He doesn’t resist, speak, or move at all, and that’s part of why deciding to do this is a big deal. He can only consent in advance, and he can’t do anything to help or stop you right now. His integral magic’s quiescent and hardly even warm, and it stays that way. Despite that it takes less than a minute before as much magic spends out as when he has genitalia, and almost all of it just soaks into the towel and disappears.

The barely-there huff he makes is so strange: wistful relief, like an exhausted little animal finally flopping down after turning endless circles trying settle in. The towel’s made special; the wet doesn’t stay in there, just like the ones Grillby uses to dry and polish the glasses in the bar. Apparently they take a very long time to make, but it’s worth it considering you can just put the towel right back without doing anything else when you’re done.

The other part of the case has special pre-dampened cloths in it to wipe the spent magic out of his pelvis, because the scent of it and possibly the feeling is very upsetting for him. You don’t know what the dampness on the cloth is, but it dissolves the magic or denatures it somehow so the scent of it goes away.

Last time he hadn’t woken up.

This time he does.

White points coalesce weakly in his slitted sockets, then they open a little more as the points quiver out, muzzily attempting to figure out what’s going on. His face tightens when he gets some idea of where he is and what happened. You’re almost done wiping so it seems best to just finish; you don’t know what to say so you just give him a calm look and a soft smile.

He makes a subvocal whine as magic beads up in his sockets, and then he starts to sob softly. You know he’s embarrassed and confused; he covers his face with his hands but lets you finish without protest or comment. You drop the used cloth in the laundry basket by the bed quickly, then lie down close to him. He curls up and reaches toward you hesitantly, so you take him in your arms.

“sorry...” he whispers vaguely, makes his dry skeleton crying noises. “m’sorry?” Something sharp twists in your chest; he sounds like a little kid who wet the bed. You suppose he kind of is, and did. You hold him close, then on some exhausted impulse, you trace a zero on the outside of one of the ribs that form his back.

He goes still, then shivers and makes an echo of that little relieved-exhausted noise. Good and bad canceling each other out. It goes away; leaves space to breathe. Nothing wrong with wanting to feel clean.

“you’re not hurt?” he mumbles inexplicably. There’s that sharp little twist again. Yeah, this really isn’t ‘awake’. Grillby was right about that, too.

“No, I’m not hurt,” you say in your plain, sleep-rusty voice instead of thinking too much about the implications. You don’t try to sound overly solicitous or soothing-on-purpose. Just honest and regular like always. “Neither are you.” You rub your slightly greasy chin on the top of his skull, trace another comforting number on his back. “See? We can sleep now.”

He gets there fairly easily, relaxed and sleeping normally now.

You have a little bit of a harder time. Probably because that sharp little thorn’s still in there twisting. He’s thousands of years old, and he had a nightmare and wet the bed because he’s terrified his child is dying, and that it somehow is his fault. Sans’s body isn’t human; when this happens you think of it like somewhere between a migraine, a nightmare, and a seizure. As far as you can tell it isn’t any of them, but you know the cause is both what happened, and what had been done in order to forget what happened.

The stillness of his now-calm sleeping soothes you; when his snores begin you finally fall asleep too.

His sockets are open when you wake up, and you pet him groggily.

“I decided to use the thing,” you mumble thickly. “The...thing. Case.”

The points in his sockets contract and focus, he tilts back a little to look at you. Then he just squirms his way into you as close as he can, a tangle of bones and blankets. He sighs and shivers.

“i know.” He’s not sorry anymore, because he knows all the way to his core that if there were any possible way to stop _that_ from happening to him, he would have found and implemented it by now. He knows that if these episodes were ever going to stop, they _would_ have by now. He has to live knowing this can happen to him any time, that he has to endure it for as long as they last, and when he wakes up, he’ll remember the whole thing: everything he said, how he felt, what he did. What happened when he was helpless.

He just has to live with it.

Live like this.

You can relate.

“what if they’re like me?” he whispers shakily, face buried in the blankets against your neck and chest. “can’t wake up, can’t sleep. don’t know what’s real and what’s not.”

“Sans-”

“what if they think they _gotta_ stay like that? trying ta keep us here? make sure they don’t do anything to make us go back?” He’s sobbing now. “what if they’re _scared_ , and i, i _can’t_ -” he chokes off, shaking miserably.

“Sans.” you give him a squeeze. “You don’t know that. You _can’t know_ that, okay?”

He’s crying now, and it’s better that he is. It’s light out now, so it was at least a few hours. Maybe it’s enough, and you’ll take a look when he’s calmed down a little.

“m’ scared,” he cough-sobs hoarsely. “thought i couldn’t stop it… now my kid’s all messed up.”

“You didn’t _have_ any way to stop that,” you say softly, trying to pet him but he’s holding you too hard. You just let him. “They’re an adult, and incidentally like five times your size now. Also has or had godlike powers. You know. That whole thing?”

“we used to be the same size,” he says vaguely. Your heart gives a hopeful little thud; he sounds like he’s sleepy again. “then they got all big n sassy.” He sighs explosively, then dashes your hopes as he sits up and wipes his face on the blanket. “thanks for taking care of it,” he adds, just sort of looking at the wall with an unreadable expression. “least i got some kinda rest.”

“You look a little better,” you say encouragingly. And he does…a _little_. The grooves under his eyes are a little less...gouge-y. Perhaps even mere furrows?

“’m heading back in a sec.” He glances at you hopefully, you reach out and give some blanket covered part of him a squeeze.

“Just let me pee and brush my teeth.”

“you should probably cover up your snips’n’snails too,” he adds, and you manage to share a weak smile.

You do the thing, and when you pop into existence just outside the bedroom door, everyone’s flipping the fuck out because Frisk woke up three minutes ago.

Sans’s eye lights gutter out with anger as he shoves his hand in his pocket; they come back to shoot an apologetic glance at Papyrus.

He shuffles up to his brother and lets himself be held for a bracing moment, then lifted to be brought to Frisk’s bedside.

Sans looks at Frisk with an expression that seems impassive until you notice the tension around his sockets. Papyrus sets him down in the spot he’s barely left for days, still dented in and warm from someone else’s vigilance.

People talk rapidly, Toriel fusses exhaustedly and elatedly, Frisk blinks vaguely. Alphys does some stuff, moves blankets around and checks things. Soul things, you assume. She’s got some kind of wireless toaster and a flashlight, doing something that requires flipping a switch back and forth on the flashlight thing. Ange takes the kids to another room to scream their excitement out under the pretext of getting blankets or food or water or tea or anything except running around into the walls and shit, although you’re getting the impression the fact that they were wasn’t actually bothering anyone. You’re too stunned and tired and scared and relieved and happy and existentially terrified to do anything about it though.

Sans pets Frisk’s face silently; lets everyone else do what they need to.

Frisk waits silently; lets everyone do what they need to, too.

Phalanges whisk away tears with long years of practice, wipe them on a blanket.

“guess i never waited this long ta give it to you, huh?” he rasps in a weird, wavery tone.

Frisk looks up at him vaguely, then sighs; winces.

Their good hand comes up to their chest, and they manage to fingerspell the answer, enhanced with a few one-handed gestures.

“You never gave it to me before,” they say, and Sans’s face goes smooth and strange. “You never told me what happened to you...or me.”

They stare at each other for a few minutes.

“As far as I can tell, this is the end. I don’t know what happens after this… I can’t _change_ anything.” Their shoulders shake as they start to cry, and it’s not silently. Loud, toneless squeals and full-voiced sobs like a toddler, grimacing as spit huffs through their clenched teeth. A few of them are still broken, too. You wonder if they hurt. Almost everything about Frisk still looks like it probably hurts.

“I died,” they sign shakily, looking like this is also kind of killing them. Everyone already got quiet; apparently Frisk wouldn’t say anything until now. Everyone’s here. Even Undyne and Mettaton, and at some point once they realized Frisk is talking to Sans, people started sitting down on the floor, on pallets, on chairs. “I didn’t….nothing _happened_.”

“frisk,” Sans chokes out, “’m sorry, okay? i-”

“No!” Their hand slices, and they grunt with pain. “It’s _over_ ,” they flap out weakly as Sans gapes, eye lights shrinking to pins with shock. “ _You saved me_.”

Frisk wails tonelessly in strange, tortured relief.

You don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about; you can tell Sans doesn’t either.

You know there are still two days or something left until the time calculated with the little scrap Sans found in the machine, and you’re trying not to think about it as hard as you can.

“kid,” he breathes, stumbles up to his knees. He reaches out with trembling hands, shies away from their hair to pat their face some more instead. Frisk’s good hand finds his hoodie, grabs and starts pulling, and Sans somehow manages to find a way to hold them without breaking them even more than they already are.

Toriel’s crying, too.

Papyrus just sits down on the floor and puts you in his lap, sticks his chin on your head and starts petting you over and over like you’re Annoying Dog or something. He’s crying for real, and you can feel him shaking. His tears slide down his chin, soak through your dirty hair and touch your scalp.

You start crying even louder than Frisk.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man!! so, um. A few of the things in this chapter I had been meaning to get around to fleshing out since chapter 17. Little late on that. Obviously, do not ever touch sleeping people in any way without their permission, and always assume you don’t have it.  
> What Sans has is like a nonhuman equivalent of (comorbid) narcolepsy, which is a LOT different than people think it is. Megahearts to my lovely readers/commenters with narcolepsy, epilepsy, enuresis, SD/ED, and other parasomnias who’ve noticed similarities to their experiences. Again, if I fuck up at some point, it’s on me.  
> Alphys does in fact have a case like yours and Grillby’s, but she’s never decided to use it. There’s a reason for that: Sans’s worst episodes just don’t happen in The Hole. I wrote a sidefic chapter about it and posted it a while back, meant to add a note explaining why a little more and forgot, which has now been rectified:
> 
> Naptime In The Hole: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17952167/chapters/45592537
> 
> Again, totally optional esp. considering Sidefic-chan's where I make every sexually uncomfortable; please know some of that will be happening here soon.  
> 


	70. physical constant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Flames – Reroute to Remain  
> https://youtu.be/80lStLXLLuM
> 
> Okay we are in the end zone, and I HAVE to thank each and every last one of you who’s stuck with *waves all around* whatever the heck THIS is for so long. By which I mean the textual equivalent of 3 novels written in the most frustratingly obtuse style possible considering it’s being delivered in installments. By the end I'll have given you enough information to answer those nagging questions you feel like you should already know the answers to.  
> Holy shit you guys. I just… love you.  
> We got at least two more (!!!!) to go, and uh. This is basically the climax into the denouement, so of COURSE please enjoy another 10k word sex scene.

Take slow bites of time.

Chew thoroughly before swallowing.

 

You pour milk in Ange’s coffee, watch the white bloom up brown underneath the black like swirls of color in a glass marble. Like you can see a flower-creature coming into existence just under the transparent darkness.

It’s so strange how the black of the coffee seems impenetrable in the cup by itself; its clarity only becomes apparent when you pour in the dense-opaque milk. The swirls of white spread like tentacles, like some glowing kraken awaiting the spoon’s touch to spread its white ink, turning the whole of it into obscuring creamy caramel so it can finally escape.

And it does; there’s nothing but coffee in the mug when you stir it.

Angie drinks it down, and you both ignore the purplish crescents beneath her eyes.

 

It’s the wrong time of year for this kind of cold, but the last few decades make a mockery of climate, ruin the reputation of anyone who dares to forecast the weather.

Oracles throwing bones, taking guesses.

The Old Gods have returned, and the weather laughs.

The earth’s relentless chaos sends you crawling backwards in time to the comforts of blankets and tea, hot cocoa and coffee.

 

You wiggle your teabag, watching the little trails of darker brown spread out like auguries demanding divination in the milk-lightened tea.

It doesn’t _feel_ over.

It feels the same, like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The same way you’ve felt your whole life.

 

There’s a weird-wired, hypomanic vibe in the house. Ever since Frisk woke up no one else feels much like sleeping. No one goes to work. You, Ange, and the kids have just been catching little naps on the pallets in Toriel’s room, which is where Frisk’s been since they were stable enough to let go of. The only sleep Sans has gotten was the six or so hours in your bed right before Frisk woke, and that has been far from uninterrupted.

 

Everyone’s exhausted but no one wants to admit it, because admitting it might make you acknowledge this is a vigil. Acknowledging it might mean stopping.

You don’t understand at all, and you understand even less because you feel it too.

 

 _Here they have a lot of fun_  
_Puttin' trouble on the run_  
_Man, you find the old and young_  
_Twistin' the night away_

 

You spend the night dancing with Mettaton in the kitchen, soft strains of Frisk’s playlist easing you into a trance. You can dance and sleep at the same time, right?

 

 _Here's a man in evenin' clothes_  
_How he got here, I don't know, but_  
_Man, you oughta see him go_  
_Twistin' the night away_

 

The light in the other room glances across the floor, glows back up to make a grey-green underwaterish light. Mettaton always gleams under his own power, too, the provocative upside-down (right-side up) heart at his waist a soothing steady glow, his soft-silvered handsome face hypnotically underlit and nostalgic like a campfire flashlight.

 

 _He's dancin' with the chick in slacks_  
_She's a movin' up and back_  
_Oh man, there ain't nothin' like_  
_Twistin' the night away_

 

You wake up still dancing, and Mettaton smiles into your eyes. Gives you a soft kiss on the cheek.

 

Twelve hours left until the deadline Sans had calculated on that worried-to-death little slip of cloth-paper.

 

You pour the milk in the tea, ask what it sees down there. Is it delving the depths of a honey-clear ocean? This ritual of warmth and comfort, consumption and caffeination, food and drug, truth and beauty lodges in the heart of the vigil. You ask it if it can see the simple truth, the humble beauty cupped in your hands.

Where’s forever?

Is it in the moments that scar themselves into your soul with joy like a brand?

Or is it in the cup you hold over and over, as many times as you need? Filled and emptied as necessary.

Infinite.

Inevitable.

Each time is different, and always exactly the same.

 

“Why don’t you go see how Grillby’s doing?” you suggest quietly. Sans shuffles in place; he reminds you of a little kid who needs to use the bathroom.

You look at the black, circular plane of the coffee, that inscrutable surface waiting to have its true clarity revealed by clouding it. You pour the milk slow and let it sit, watch the submerged billows rear up violently like a dust storm on the surface of some faraway planet. Tiny coffee societies in shambles, their eternal-night tranquility about to be scoured bare by dust stirred up under the hooves of the Pale Horse. The little coffee-people inside scramble to clutch loved ones close in their despair, whisper endearments before the life is choked out of them by the invading clouds of-

“Is Lola under the table?” you ask softly into Sans’s indecisive silence.

“no,” he answers as if its being pulled out of him. “she’s laughing.”

You turn around and lean your butt into the edge of the countertop. Bring the coffee to your lips, take a swig.

Sweet as pie, sweet as the cold, stillborn springtime outside the kitchen window.

Your rub the cableknit over your arm, exhale again to feel the caffeinated steam against the rough edges of your eyes.

“He knows how you get,” you whispers quietly into the hot surface of the coffee. “It’ll mean a lot if you just go check on him, even for a few minutes.”

Sans sighs and slumps.

Nods.

Once he’s gone, you go talk to Frisk.

 

Frisk looks at you a little uncomfortably, then sighs.

“It’s easier to tell you for some reason,” they sign laboriously.

“Probably because I’m not your parent,” you say, having a flash of insight into why it’s possible Frisk might not want to talk about it with Sans. “Did you figure out a way to expose…”

They blush a little.

“Foster made me realize that was what needed to happen, but...it’s not like she could help with it.” Frisk sighs, dark irises darting a little. “He’s never been able to expose…” Their face crumples; tenses don’t come across in ASL very well, but you still know why.

Flowey is gone.

“He was never able to expose his…” They obviously don’t know how to say it.

“You can just say ‘soul’”,” you encourage lightly. “I’ll still know what you mean.”

“It feels disrespectful. He didn’t like to think of it that way.”

“How about ‘piece’? Or, um. Shard?”

They sigh heavily.

“He couldn’t, but _I_ could do it,” they gesture finally. “It was...one of the last things we tried, and it felt weird. Not...bad weird, but like...I don’t know. I guess the reason I could do it because in a way...it was my soul, too. Chara’s.”

This might be the first time you’ve seen them spell that name in this house. You really want to ask them certain questions at this point, but you manage to restrain yourself. It doesn’t feel safe yet. You don’t know if it ever will, but there’s nothing wrong with giving it a little more time, right?

It’s probably fine.

“When I did, I saw how he wanted to be-”

“Wait, what?” you interrupt, unable to help yourself at this point. “You can _see souls_??”

Frisk gives you a strange look, but not like they don’t understand. More like they're surprised that you don’t.

“No? Humans can’t...” they trail off. Look at you closely, then abruptly avert their gaze and turn...purple. Oh, shit, they’re _blushing_.

The blushing is contagious.

“You have to put their magic on your eyes,” they flap out awkwardly, staring determinedly at the wall. “I thought _you_ would… know about. That.”

Oh. Oh god.

…Yeeeeeeesh.

You figure you can make a guess as to why they thought that, too. After all, Sans’s magic has gotten into your eyes at least a dozen times at this point, and you know it does weird things to your vision. Strange colors and shapes, waves of...something.

Just never at the same time as Sans’s soul’s been exposed.

Weirdly enough.

“It’s not the same as what a monster sees that way,” they add quickly, still not looking at you. “It’s more like a...vision of something.”

 

You watch the green swirl up as you whisk it together; precious matcha blended in hot milk, sweetened with maple and left to steep. A swish of the spoon and the patterns of dark and light green appear. You stir to see it disappear again, blend together into medium green.

It’s almost boiling even after adding more milk to cool it; you press your finger to the side of the ceramic bowl-mug until the heat you feel turns hollow with pain.

The taste in your mouth goes dry-smooth-absorbent, makes you hunger for tepid bone.

Still alive.

 

“It used to make me so mad,” they gesture almost absently. “It’s not like _I_ could die, either.

“Are you still mad?” You ask slowly.

“I don’t know,” they tell the wall.

“No,” they tell you.

You help them lean back in bed.

“Yes,” they tell the ceiling.

There’s another question you still won’t ask, even though Frisk seems to have broken the moratorium on names.

After all, it’s rude to talk about someone who’s listening.

 

You stand like a sentinel or some kind of inanimate column, watching your sister comforting Toriel. You’re frozen with surprise...not because your sister’s actually being cute and intimate with someone in a way that she’s never have been with her ex, but…

Because you’ve never actually seen Toriel _allow_ anyone to comfort her before. Not like this.

Pale-horned head bowed and tucked low into Angie’s neck, shivering with...sobs? Fear? Some kind of indescribable magical disturbance?

Angie looks like whatever she feels is very, very complicated. Certainly not unwelcome, but always somehow unexpected even after time elapses. Turning over to show a new face like the moon; that’s how her love is.

You know that now.

You know your love is different, more complicated. Harder to see clearly, but rewarding and expansive if you take the time to learn their names and relationships.

You’ve always liked the stars better anyhow. Constant, eternal, static in context no matter how you bob and spin.

Always imploding into antimatter and shit when you least expect it, but probably not until long after you and everyone you love is already dust. It’s a comforting thought, because it’s something that can never be your fault.

It’s weird you’ve never thought about it before, but Toriel’s always been...not stoic, but...impenetrable. Like nothing could truly rattle her, no matter how upset she gets. Even when she’s been cored like an apple, when her child is dying, when the shit hits the fan and everything’s gone haywire, Toriel always seems like she’d be the last entity standing in any species of wreckage.

In Angie’s arms, she looks vulnerable.

Almost...small.

Maybe she’s just the kind of person where people see whatever they need to see when they look at her. Maybe she’s just the kind of person inclined to let them.

You can relate.

 

Undyne and Papyrus are playing some kind of extremely stompy projected game, and Frisk is front and center tucked into a protective cabbage of blankets and pillows on the couch behind them. Shonda and Nattie are ensconced like guardians to either side of them just in case they need or want anything besides the entertainment of the world’s tallest living skeleton and whatever the heck Undyne is doing gymnastics amongst the breakables, and somehow managing to not break any of them. Well. Papyrus’s dance is probably happening around Undyne’s, like a tornado of caution complementing the chaos inside.

Not the same. Not even terribly _alike_.

Just…compatible.

The music that goes along with it is thundering through the house, and it’s almost midnight. There’s a reason Toriel lives a bit removed from the rest of the neighborhood, and it’s not just the sprawling size of her abode. Her family’s huge, and loud, and many of them don’t really sleep very often. Many of them need space to run off excessive energy, overabundant fears, tsunamis of determination.

Many of them haven’t slept in days, including the ones who need to.

You meet his sockets from across the room, give him a slow, suggestive smile.

 

Angie’s in the dining room with Toriel and Alphys, talking over coffee (for Ange) and tea (for Toriel and Alphys), their own music playing loud to wage war against the roughhousers’ game soundtrack.

 

Mettaton’s not here at the moment, but you never know when he might show up. Probably whenever he’s needed most.

 

“Let’s go to bed,” you gesture silently. Sans’s body unwinds slightly, shoulders lower and spread.

He nods.

“Kitchen first,” he signs in the language only he and his brother speak.

 

“Why do you like fish smell so much?” you ask medium-loud, being astutely ignored by the table chatterers. The murky green isn’t much improved by the Mettaton milk you pour in with the idea of cooling it.

“cause i _can_ smell it,” he answers quietly, and your face gets hot as you sway a little. You’re too tired for honesty right now. Too tired for...something.

You steal his mug and drain it.

“...wow,” he says dryly, impressed.

“That’s better,” you say with a lusty sigh, glad it’s already dissolved out into your body instead of sitting in your stomach. Because otherwise it might have made a sudden reappearance in the sink.

“I can’t believe you drink that willingly,” you add after a deep shudder.

He sighs and smiles, pulls a second mug out of his phone.

“you’re lucky i love you,” he says impishly. It makes you grin, then it makes you melt.

“Yeah. I really, really am,” you reply, and watch him sway with your honesty in turn. He downs the second mug of Sea Tea, and takes your mug-warmed hand in his hard, smooth one.

 

You glory in the trembling, tepid bone under your hands and between your lips. You hold it close, savor its dry fragrance. You pull back to stare into his sockets, watch the points inside quiver and spread with love and longing.

You shiver when his expression changes, hard bone flexing impossibly under the soft pads of your thumbs.

 

Two floors away, the game’s music wars with the dance music in the kitchen; sounds like Mettaton's here again, dancing the others through the night one by one. Alphys, Toriel, Angie chattering in a roar over and under the noise in waves.

It’s so loud you barely hear one of the kids tear ass across the sitting room with a rapid drumroll-patter, thud into the kitchen with a crash. Frisk must have finally asked for something to eat or drink. Hollering and raucous laughter flow through the house, float up to dissolve out into peaky white noise.

It’s almost midnight. No one else goes to bed.

 

“Do you know if there are any shortcuts to the bone zone around here?” you ask, sighing with bliss as his hands slide up your shirt.

“’m thinkin’ we should stay here,” Sans replies quietly. You’re a little disappointed, but you settle back. Then you pause, because Sans is looking at you in confusion now.

Then something processes, and his face clears.

“i meant we should stay here to do it,” he clarifies. “might as well give alphys n undyne a break, y’know?”

“I...” You blink at him rapidly. “I do not, in fact, know.”

“s’what they been up to all those times they went off to the bedroom,” he explains.

“But…everyone...knows?” you say in a strangled whisper.

“that’s kinda the point, yeah,” he says, a little crease appearing between his sockets as he exhales. “don’t mean ta put you off, s’jus’...they been staying over to help tori n everyone feel a lil better. remember how i showed you that one time? it’s not like...i dunno.” He snorts, makes a wry face. “not like when frisk has mk over, that’s for sure. not like anyone could hear us over _that_ anyhow,” he chuckles softly. “this’s like… when you come in, smell a pie baking or something. feels like _home_ , y’know?” Your face does not apparently reassure him that you understand, and he sighs.

“’m not trying to pressure you,” he says softly. He means it. “nothin’ like that. we can stay here and cuddle, or go wherever you feel comfortable for a lil bit, k? we can touch with jus’ bodies, if you like that idea more.” He gives you a slow, loving smile. “trying to explain… cause i want you to know me,” he adds quietly.

You nod. You get that.

 

There’s all your favorite blankets pilled in here with you both in a messy, massive nest, in the middle of the big bed in the spare bedroom that’s the farthest away from everything and everyone else, but still...still part. Not cut off. The whole house buzzes with noise and people, blending out into a broad, soothing hum of life.

Still alive.

Safe.

 

“it’s something people only do when they’re somewhere safe, and gonna stay put for a while. not likely to get interrupted, have to run off somewhere…” He trails off, staring up at the ceiling. “on their own, with someone else, doesn’t matter. you only take it out if you feel like you’re safe, so if you’re in a place someone’s got themselves out...you feel like _you’re_ safe, too. think it’s leftover from the war, too. s’why grillbz lets people use his room for that sometimes...lola jus’ goes under the table.” He sighs, rubbing a little circle between your shoulderblades absently. “even if there’s something bad going on, makes it feel like it’s not an emergency. even if it’s...”

His face doesn’t give anything away.

“even if it is.”

 

“It doesn’t feel over,” you whisper hollowly.

 

Something in his expression crumbles, and he looks at you with a roil of conflicting emotions quivering in the points in his sockets.

“if everything jus’ disappears...this’s exactly where i wanna be, doing exactly what i want to be doing. everyone’s all here n safe, having a nice time. me and you in here, touching each other, making each other feel good.”

A bead of magic wells up in the inner corner of his socket, slides down the groove under it halfway and just hovers there glistening.

“that’s all i ever wanted, y’know? all that fighting and being scared all the time, all this shit i wanna forget and remember, wondering w-what the fuck any of it _means_ if, if _i_ _c-_ _can’t even_ …” He cuts himself off with a dry clicking noise. “…wondering when it’s all gonna get taken away,” he finishes roughly. “s’like you said a long time ago. i jus’ wanna eat my slice. don’t need any more than that.”

 

“It’s still...” Your voice chokes itself into nonexistence, and you take a deep breath. “That’s what being human feels like,” you whisper tightly. “Or maybe it’s just me. It’s _this_. All the time.”

“maybe that’s just what existing feels like,” he says slow and careful. He looks into your eyes for a long time, stroking your face with his fingers.

You do the same.

“guess if we’re still here in the morning...gotta find a new way ta feel, huh?”

“You broke the rules,” you whisper. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about it.”

He glances to the side, then back at you with a weak-soft little grin. A bead of magic trembles at the corner of his socket, but doesn’t fall. You wipe it away with your thumb.

“following rules isn’t really, uh. my thing.”

“I know. I love you,” you sigh, wrapping your arms around to pull him in tight. You whisper into his neck. “Let’s bang out.”

“love you too. wanna do it here?”

“Yep,” you say shortly, then stick your tongue in his fused mandibular fossa just to hear that low growling exhale you love. Neither of you really have a ton to say after that; instead you hold each other, cuddling and nudging until your souls thrum with what you feel. You both end up closing your eyes as he strokes himself and you, then slowly… loving and patient, he starts calling.

Sans kneels up and straddles you, the formless warmth in his pelvis cradling the coil of undemanding heat just under your navel. You move your hands away, sling your arms low around his hips and wrap your hand around your forearm, snug and relaxed at once. You feel a hot little quiver of excitement; this posture usually means he wants to be the active partner, to make you feel good. Make you feel special, give you something he likes and hopes you will too.

When his breath’s hot, he pulls back a minute and waits until you open your eyes. The points in his sockets are broad and quivery, full of love, sadness, fear, longing.

“want me to tug?”

“Yeah,” you whisper, “I want you to touch me, too.” His sincere smile shines right through all the emotions lodged in his eyes, then he closes his sockets again before resting his frontal bone lightly to your forehead. He presses close and tight so you can both feel his hand sliding up and down between your shirts, a thin bone barrier between your bodies. Bodies in turn that are just a thin barrier between the selves that yearn soft and inevitable towards each other: always approaching, already promise-entwined, loose tapestries of communicating and caring tightening over time, no matter what direction it passes in.

When the feeling’s too big to hold anymore, he arches up and pulls you both one-handed with a graceful, twisting gesture as you hum with pleasure together.

He looks into your souls cupped in his left hand with a slender phalanx between; the other cradles the back of your head. His fingertips skim across the surface of your soul light and repetitive, making you shiver…you see he’s touching himself the same way. His teeth part slightly, then more the longer he does it; his breath starts coming in soft little puffs in time with his flickering touches. You moan and nuzzle, then kiss and nip until your lips are swollen and you’re panting soft-synchronized right into each other. He causes your nose to dip into his nasal cavity a few times, and you're starting to wonder if he likes it in a sexy way. His glancing contact across your soul is so subtle you hardly notice it’s getting deeper, that he’s tilting you closer until you start to feel something, almost like a kind of echo of bass. Like a sound you feel with your body.

Your soft exhale turns to a gentle moan when you realize you’re getting low-throbbing pulses of how he feels to himself along with the way he feels touching you.

“you feel me in there?” he whispers into your mouth, low and shaky. “you like it?”

His breath hitches audibly when you let him _know_ how good this is for you; his fingers sink in deep to chase how much you like the way he lets you in, gives you who he is to himself.

Another dry hitch when he pulls back to look, sees what you want to feel _with_ him.

“want me to put us together?” he breathes, barely audible as he pulls his fingers away, waiting.

“Yeah,” you whimper, then let out a big, shaky sigh as he moans and rolls his face against yours, surrendering to the overwhelming moment when you express your desire. Moans again when he pushes his fingertips back in, lets it roll through him deep and shivery, drips out and overflows to spill into you. Out and in some more; flickering bits of each of you, teasing glimpses that happen in all your senses at once.

“got a question,” he says quietly once he calms a bit, but he touches you like he has been some more before he gets around to asking it. You’re not complaining.

“was thinking i might… wanna push into us, but not if it’s gonna scare you,” he whispers hesitantly, pulls his fingers away again to let you mull it over privately.

“I want that too,” you say, a little awkwardly with your lower lip between his teeth. He lets it go with a subvocal little almost-noise, and you circle the back of his sacrum through his shorts with the flat of your hand. “You remember how to take it out and everything?”

“yeah,” he answers after a minute. “um. are you…ok with seeing that?” he asks, something tiny and vulnerable in his voice. Something in your chest wobbles like a thin piece of sheet metal; he’s afraid you won’t stay with him when he does it. He’s worried you’ll leave him alone, that you think it’s gross. You arch suggestively, stroke the curve of his iliac crest with your palm as he finally does what you’re urging, and peeks at your soul.

He chokes back a little sob when he sees it, but you tell him anyways because you want to.

“I’m going to stay right here and take care of you the whole time, make sure you’re okay. I _want_ to be with you for it. That’s part of it for you, and I want everything you are, okay? You know I do,” you finish low and rough. Feels so good to say it, to tell him. You want him to _know_.

“yeah,” he says, voice cracking in the middle. “yeah, okay.” He leans down and nips your chin gently; you feel him shake deep inside.

You’re leaned back into the big wad of pillows and blankets; there’s another comforter wrapped up and around you both against the unexpected chill. It’s like you’re floating on a cloud, hugging Sans’s bone hips covered in smooth material. You stroke an unyielding curve here and there as you nuzzle each other unhurriedly, savoring each and every moment.

Eventually Sans doesn’t dip his fingers out anymore, just keeps rubbing and stroking deep inside both of you slow and insistent. His breathing gets ragged as the echo floods deeper, and you’re so close now you can feel his yearning when his fingers spread and penetrate.

“ready?” he asks, voice thick with the pleasure of his own touch. He feels your answer bloom, and with a gentle bend of his wrist he slides your souls into each other.

A rippling coo warbles out; apparently touching _while_ doing this is considerably more pleasurable than he’d imagined. Or you, since that’s kind of the same thing right now. There’s an intense, voluminous sensation that you can’t quite categorize: eagerness without urgency, diffuse desire blown expansive and lush. As soon as you notice, you know that this is what his body feels when he wants to push his magic into his soul or yours. You give yourself up to it; it’s quivery-full like a spring about to be struck, ready to soak into parched earth. Like something will _happen_.

It sparks bright with inspiration… this is something generative.

You feel a bead of agitated magic well up and slide along your inferior ramus, feel it slip down the inside of your femur towards your knee. It yearns; it seeks. It wants to be part of this, and so it becomes.

You feel thick blood thundering through your body, the flesh of it dense and heavy with chemical messages igniting nerves with sensation. It speaks to itself, listening for his body and hearing through touch: becoming. You taste your heartbeat; swallow it down.

Soft exhalations steady from a throat that is and one that isn’t: not yet. Feels so good to wait, to let this sensation-emotion pool and fill. Sans tries to concentrate on himself a moment, it’s hard but he...he wants to give you him, give himself and, and you… he shivers, exhales in amusement and wonder. Spread his fingers and tries again. His own touch helps ground him a little; he’s guiding the experience for you both with it, and you’re enjoying it a lot.

Sans wants to give you something special.

His taste.

Not (him-to-you), the spicy, simultaneously numbing and sensitizing tingle you love. That’s literally a taste: a physical sensation that your body understands and enjoys. When monsters talk about tasting or smelling each other’s magic, they’re talking about senses you don’t have words for. He wants to share his (absorb-communicate), and he can give you (him-to-himself) when you’re together like this.

Magic sheds at the inner corner of his socket, slides down the groove beneath it. He exhales slow and guttural, then tilts his head back so it runs down his grin and in through his teeth, dissolves inside his narrow, sensitive mouth.

He tastes himself and so do you; this is what he means by _sweet_. The same as when his magic becomes not-part of him but felt _backwards_ , echoing into itself and blooming like overwhelming anticipation, like faithless risk, like sweet-hot pain, like sharpened sugar.

Hidden danger surges out so flashing-fast you can’t even see it, then contracts abruptly to a tiny point, lambent and irresistible.

Temptation divides: cyan and yellow, a perilous imbalance. One and two at the same time.

He’s so deep; down and down until light disappears. Unbearable pressure and endless dark. The only light here is what he makes himself, drawing them in, making them curious. Two little sparks ignite underwater, his delicate-dual foxfire soul glinting yellow-cyan, his pleasure flickering rapidly into pale green and he moans soft, letting you feel him with his own body, taste him with the secret space inside his skull.

Recklessness and caution collide between the waves; they become each other as he swallows them down.

His neck cranes back, his bone face draws tight as he huffs and pants, voice decorating his breath as the pleasure shimmers unexpectedly tight. It’s your physical arousal, a heated need woken rather abruptly by his taste.

He feels your body like it’s _his._

His magic sheds across his face, and he tastes his peppercorn tingle with your mouth too as he patters down. (Him to himself; him to you.) His teeth open as wide as they can (a wedged sliver of ethereal darkness) and he shoves your faces together with a breathless moan, pushes with his chin to part your lips; insistent and demanding with your body’s drive. When you push your tongue inside, you share a soft-shocked cry.

You taste so _bright_ to him, blue supersaturated in layers over itself until it bleeds out at the edges, an infinitely collapsing house of cards lighting the darkness with something even darker. It billows and conceals, shifts and reveals, makes known and keeps secrets (from yourself, from him).

The _real_ and the _ideal_ reflect each other until they become, and their discrepancies shift and sigh, flicker between wor/l/ds. A paper fountain of illusions collapses, and all that’s left is the midnight starkness of the truth: this is the story he needed, too.

The soul of this story is the one you make together, the one you tell each other each time you decide all over again to love, to trust, to let each other in.

The sky to his ocean: one evaporates up endlessly into you, one pours endlessly down into him. They swirl into each other until there’s no up or down anymore, no _time_ , nothing that can separate. Mingled with his sweetness, your taste is an exquisite communication. It’s the moment you tell him you want him, that you want _this_ with him. Physical love generated inside your bodies and shared with a kiss you can both taste with his impossible mouth.

You’re physical, and he shouldn’t be _able_ to taste you like this.

Mingled with his magic, mingled in this moment

The smallest molecule of you catalyzed into something you can’t see

He tastes your body.

(You to him.)

With another watery coo his magic pushes the taste you make together deep inside your joined soul, that impossible moment when your transformed substance dissolved out into his mouth along with himself. His body floods into both of you, and that moment keeps happening. When you’re joined like this his soft exhale deepens and wavers, and you share the calming thrill of his magic becoming not-part of him: a profoundly erotic, warmth-like _spread_ _ing_ sensation that goes through everything he is when the first little drop tips out into you both.

He feels this with his entire body because it’s all one piece (hard bones and soft magic; one and two); his body’s an expression of his soul. And so is the magic he pushes with intent to provide and enhance pleasure, to give what he feels _for_ you, _to_ you. As sincerely and deeply as he’s capable of, which is absolute.

Utterly astounded, you experience the _completion_ of the sensation that is (Sans-pushes-his-magic). This is the first time you’ve truly felt it, because his reception is the other half of it: how it feels to be one and two at the same time, infinitely divisible. The closest has been when he pushes at the same time into both of you, but this is beyond time: a single sensation-point because you exist in the same place. You _feel_ his body, you _know_ it. He feels the physical event of his love with your body, he knows it with your soul.

How he feels coming out spreads wide and trembling-full; you both gasp and shiver as how he feels _going in_ plunges down, down, down. Turning, sinking, floated up to the bottom on its inescapable flood and churned ceaselessly into each other under the yellow-cyan waves.

His body floods into his soul and becomes it, he becomes himself who is also you. He’s two and one, he’s five once and twice; he’s _ten_ , he’s five-plus-you, he’s infinitely divisible so that each atom of you has a counterpart inside him.

He’s just one, he’s _always_ one: he feels more perfect and whole than ever. You’re infinitely continuous with yourself, all-of-a-piece. He comes out, he goes inside. Ocean swallowed up by midnight: lost and found.

Exactly where he is, you are. His body fills you both.

It’s so intense the only way you can stand it is by doing it more.

You never imagined pushing his magic into himself could feel...like this. For millennia he kept it for himself, afraid to share this without knowing why, guarding it closely so no one would know how good it is… so no one could, no one could _take_ it and he doesn’t know why he thought they could…how could anyone _take_ this from him…

You weep together. He knows why now.

It’s why he couldn’t _stop himself_ from doing it when he felt your orgasm for the first time.

He didn’t tell you, but that’s not normal.

He _knows_ it’s not; he knows all of these acts should be choices, and it’s devastating to be shown how thoroughly they’d been stolen from him, slapped raw all over again with the ways he’d been taken away from himself. To have his ugly face shoved into the mess of his own pain and degradation, have it proven over and over that there’s nothing he is that can’t be violated and warped. He can’t hold on to anything, can’t keep it for himself. Can’t keep it safe, can’t… he can’t.

Sans doesn’t remember what was done to him; it was unraveled from his soul and his mind.

But his body feels it.

Merged like this, his body feels yours listening, and it knows how it was forced to betray him. There’s a high whine in Sans’s deep voice; when he feels himself through you, his body tells him that it’s been trying to protect him this whole time. Did its best, but it’s just his _body_ ; it can’t think. All it does is feel, and...remember, in its own way. His body remembers that even this precious gift of itself had been wrung out of him without his permission, and it tried to tell him the only way it could: just a feeling.

His body whispered deeper than his hearing, deeper than his voice: never let _anyone_ know how good he feels. They can steal it, and you _can’t stop them_. They’ll take you from yourself, turn you into a thing they use to make themselves feel good, use your own body to hurt you. Make you _sick_ _(_ ~~ _drowning; dying_~~ _)._

His body lied, told him he didn’t _have_ any genitalia so it couldn’t be forced out to be, to, to be (breaking; ~~_burned-cut-torn_~~ dying) used anymore. His body told him to never let anyone that close, told him it’s bad (he’s _bad_ , he deserves-) told him NO, and then wrapped itself up tight and went to sleep for thousands of years.

His body soothes the path of this knowledge, easing and calming even as the truth’s edges slip sharp between you.

Sans punished his body for its lies, and it punished him right back, didn’t it.

Sans tried to take his body’s choices away, and he suffered for it.

Sans tried to put something bad in the place his body insisted something bad had been, and he suffered for it.

You’re a part of Sans when you feel him and his body finally start to forgive each other.

His genitalia doesn’t want to expand right now; it likes being tucked where it is. His body’s cautious, not used to what you’re doing right now, not used to these feelings yet. Not used to his soul merged with yours and seething-full of sweet, heavy magic.

His body hasn’t decided if it wants to participate.

His body chooses _every_ time, and sometimes it decides to just be the sweet bare bones you love. You both moan soft, because that tender new protectiveness unfurls and strengthens when it’s shared. His body’s sweet-sleepy caution is just as erotic in its own way as… yeah, there it is. Just as strong, just as mutual.

 _Y_ _our_ body definitely wants something, and for Sans that’s just as immediate as what he feels.

He feels how your body can _call_ his, just like you can call his soul. Because it knows his body’s language: it was forced to feel pleasure, even when you didn’t like it. Even when you didn’t want to.

He feels what your body tells his body: his uniqueness gives you permission to feel just as good as you want to, lets you feel things you told yourself: never again. His body’s mercurial and undemanding; it just is, and it lets you choose every time, too. Because he doesn’t feel like anything else, you can let him make you feel just as good as you want to, let him take you outside your desperate stranglehold on control and give yourself up to what you’re capable of feeling.

Not that there aren’t things both of you will never do.

You won’t put his genitalia _inside_ your mouth in certain ways.

And he won’t do anything that causes him to see or touch your blood.

No wonder this isn’t something monsters do casually; it gets very hard to tell whose body is whose, and that requires a lot of trust. You’re not sure when he got done pushing magic inside, but it stopped. He doesn’t actually have to use his hands to do it either; your merged souls are pinioned between your torsos now, and his magic had continued to unwind into your souls after phalanges slid away. You’re both touching your joined soul, and you’re full of his seething-sweet magic together. It’s as close as you can be.

You like how he touches you, and you want him to do it the way he likes to feel.

His thin bone arm snakes down through his own body now to glide between you, smooth fingers sliding into your waistband to where desire sharpens between your thighs.

His gasp draws air out of your mouth when he touches it, and his arm tightens around your shoulders even as he moves down your body, merged-pinioned soul along with him. His smooth-and-rough face pushes into your shoulder, rubs across as his narrow, hard fingers slide inside you. It feels better for him that way; this is how he likes it.

The way your velvety texture inside feels against his sensitive fingers is its own bliss; this is _you_ , feels like you. Doesn’t feel like anything else, and he still...his magic seethes in your souls; he still _tastes_ you, the supersaturated blue and concealing-revealing billows of _you_. His skull tilts up shakily so he can look at you while he moans and shivers. He loves that you let him inside, loves the way it makes him feel to touch you this way, even when you’re not joined. Magic slides down his face; the quivering vulnerability that partners your pleasure is the same he feels when he lets you inside his mouth.

It feels like the tension builds in his body instead of yours as the movements of his hand speed up, get focused. Directional, going towards something… going somewhere together. He loves to ask and answer, does it (feels it) over and over, in and out. He pulls back further, and when he slides in again four thin phalanges press you (him) open, nubbly-smooth fullness all the way to the carpals. He cries out and shakes, his eyes spread wide in narrowed sockets as he gasps in short, frantic little pants. His shoulder works furiously as rubs his carpals hard where the tension coils, begging to be sprung free.

_So close._

When your climax arrives it’s slow-rolling and broad, much more like his usually feel than yours. His arm pulls you up against him hard and phalanges tighten in the material of your shirt; his muffled cries of release huff hot into thefabric as you moan quiet and shaky, fingers squeezing between cloth-covered vertebral processes.

Once it ebbs and spreads out into satisfaction, his wet fingers pet you softly, then trail back out and up to caress your fevered skin. He groans and gets looser all over as your flood of chemicals catalyzes into emotions, pinging back and forth like wet electricity that fizzles out into love-closeness-hunger-fulfillment. The way your body makes these emotions is so alien, so heady and bright to him. He lies on you in a daze, experiencing the slow fireworks that dissolve out into your blood, the sizzling molecules flying apart, flooding your brain with the emotion he experiences as (so close).

As long as your soul stays with his it keeps his body from processing the magic he’s pushed into whatever that stuff is that makes it able to come back out; turns out it also keeps it from making him sick until you’re done, so that’s nice.

You think you might be crying a little, because it’s not scary at all.

He moans soft when he feels the porosity of his own bones with the soft pads of your fingers in the part of his ribcage he can’t reach himself. You moan at the melting-soft plushness of thick thighs squeezed in narrow-hard phalanges. The thrill of your mouth on his sensitive vertebrae makes you shiver and grunt, and the blunt heat of your fingers pushing between his ribs has you gasping. He shudders hard with your goosebumps as the smooth points of his distal phalanges drag across your heated skin.

You’re really glad you already came when a twinge of inspired excitement washes through both of you like ink in water (milk in coffee). Sans wants to do something a little unusual. Nothing kinky, but it doesn’t really do anything, just feels sexy and tastes good. Playing around. Something he likes to do to himself, but you can feel it too so he wants to make sure. You feel his smile bloom inside you; he already knows you want to try whatever this is too _._

You share a vague, nasal chuckle when he lets you know _what_. He wiggles a distal pinky through the widest point between his teeth; his index phalanx on the opposite hand offers itself at your lips. Sans purrs low and breathy as he _pushes_ magic into your mouths just to savor the warm, spreading sensation he feels at its emergence, just to feel the not-heat of its fresh richness, its secret sweetness dissolving out inside him.

He feels indulgent and playful; he’s doing something sexual in different place than it would usually happen. Just to feel it come out and taste its (intent-meaning) for its own sake. His voice shivers wide into a surprisingly gratified growl when he tastes it with _your_ mouth; shed magic isn’t the same as pushed, and apparently it doesn’t taste the same to _you_ , either.

You gasp, then let out an expansively heartfelt exhale. This is like a lightly salted, fatty-rich pudding that melts apart until it’s _inside_ your tongue, except it’s definitely _not_ food. The hint of sweetness reminds you of dark maple stirred into how your orgasmic afterglow felt dissolving out in your bloodstream, and you can hear Sans’s voice making some downright obscene noises with the way this is making you feel.

A wicked chuckle escapes around the finger in your mouth. Regardless of his standards, the experience of sucking his sexual fluids out of his body and basically drinking them is pretty fucking kinky to _you_ , and he’s getting every bit of that. He often does this to himself when he pushes magic and wants more than he should have; pushing it in his mouth makes him feel it harder in his soul, enhances his pleasure to exquisite heights without prolonging it more than intended. You’re loving it, and he keeps it coming. There’s a little shiver of subversive pleasure; this is the absolute essence of decadence. It’s sexual indulgence distilled and flooding right into your mouth. A little of his magic’s unfurling itself into your souls again now too, and you share a deeper, more dazed groan as both happen at once. You immediately see what he meant by _enhanced_.

He’s lying on you floppy and lush like a disjointed sack of bones, souls transfixed half inside your bodies, watching you with broad points in narrow sockets. In this moment you see yourself the way he does. Beautiful, vibrant, fascinating, complex. Hot breath on his metacarpals as that spreading, voluminous warmth fills you both; moaning with repletion as you share the frivolously-spent taste of his deepest, most sexual self again and again.

You keep on licking his fingers like naughty children that stole a bowl of cake batter, moaning and giggling peacefully as your souls separate back into each other in tiny increments so slow you barely realize it’s happening.

So slow, you don’t even realize it’s _done_ until you hear the first faint little cough. He gives you a slow socket-blink and takes his fingers back with a sheepish, but not unhappy smile.

You gather his loose bones up in your arms, lean up and back as he huddles into you with a sigh that rattles faintly.

He curls up sideways against your body while you hold him close, skull tucked up under your chin. You rub his humerus slow up and down, enjoying the soft fullness of his magic’s lacy pattern inside you.

The fragile spire of hope that tomorrow will come.

The depth of the love you’re sharing now in case it doesn’t.

“you doing okay?” you ask after a minute and another faint rasp and spasm.

“hmm,” he murmurs thickly, “it doesn’t… feel _bad_ , actually.” It’s like you can hear the magic in his voice, heavy and slow. “maybe cause m’not scared? s’kinda...sleepy?”

He sighs again, and you can hear that same thickness all through his breath.

“s’like i can be quiet and let it happen,” he adds mushily. “my body’s takin’ care a me.” The hand that’s not curled patiently at his sternum strokes the underside of your arm light and almost ticklish as his raspy breathing deepens in preparation. “you are, too. feels… safe,” he breathes shakily, then coughs wet and low. “’s almos’ done...” he whispers, and you rub your lips over the top of his skull, give it a soft kiss.

“mm k,” he slurs, and you help prop him up into a more upright sitting position.

His face goes vague to the point of drugged-looking blankness; his sockets go to introspective slits. Phalanges shift softly around his sternum, bump over where his ribs join it. His shoulders shake gently, and a deep rattle sounds some somewhere inside him.

His fingers draw back calmly, and a glowing blorp of silvery stuff follows them to just kind of hover there blobbily like it never did anything wrong ever in its life.

You both stare at it.

Then you look at each other for a long, mutual moment of profound realization.

You crack up laughing at the same time because neither of you considered for one solitary second what you would _do with it_ now that it’s here.

Wow.

Sans shrugs, waddle-crawls one handed over to the side of the bed and stretches his arm out, turns his hand over and just….

Dumps it in the wastebasket with a plop. Where it sits puddled indignantly in old waxpaper pudding cups, soaking into lint and tissues like phosphorescent quicksilver.

And on another level, there’s something beautiful about his adamantly casual disposal of the substance that’s caused him so much fucking suffering. It’s literally his biological waste product, and he’s been put through several kinds of hell because of it, over it. He’s been treated like a donkey that shit gold from a fairy tale, but he’s a person. Whatever this stuff is doesn't matter because… because it’s not as important as _he_ is.

There’s something viscerally satisfying about seeing him just throw it away, an assertion of his own worth. Something like _relief_ , something that makes laughing at it feel almost as good as what you just shared together.

Well. Except for one thing.

“Sans,” you whine between hysterical wheezes, “it _glows_. It’s going to keep me awake once we turn the lamp off.”

“….huh.” he just stays there on all fours, thinking and looking around.

He takes a big, square book from the nightstand and puts it over the top of the wastebasket, effectively lidding it and containing the glow.

So you laugh for another five minutes, the latter four of which are spent also cuddling Sans again.

“Did you like it?” you ask after you’ve been calm for a little bit.

He hums quietly, nudging his face into your shoulder. “...mm. well, i liked putting it in there,” he snickers lightly. “taking it out’s fine, but it’s not sexy or anything.” he sighs, wiggles into you happily. “glad you stayed with me,” he whispers quiet and vulnerable after a bit.

“Me too. Since you took it out...you don’t have your magic in there anymore, right?”

“nope,” he says soft and amused, then he gets thoughtful. “actually, uh. heh. you mind if i…?” He makes a gesture you understand quite well at this point.

“Hot,” you comment sincerely, smiling and stroking his skull. “Go for it.”

He gives you a soft, pleased glance and lets his sockets drift half mast, rubs his sternum thoughtfully for about a minute, then pulls himself out with a satisfied, nasal little exhale.

“feels so good when you look at me,” he whispers as he settles into you sideways. You wrap your arms around him and give him a little squeeze, look down into the broad, lovely skull lit by his intimate blue-yellow paleness. “mm. gonna watch me do it?”

“I sure am,” you answer, rubbing your lips across smooth bone.

“hold me like this,” he grunts demandingly, leans back into the crook of your elbow so you can watch his face. He looks back up at you instead of into himself, expression soft and loving with long, narrow sockets. He stares right into your eyes when he slides a finger into himself with a near-silent, subvocal moan.

He curves his middle phalanx down slow toward the twin-curved underside of his delicate soul; it almost seems to quiver as the tip moves along, like the glow draws itself together from the edges into his touch with a soft swirl of fragile colors. He exhales slow with a throaty rasp in it as he gives the cleft a deep tickle, the points in his sockets spreading out broad as pleasure pushes the air out of him.

His hard, complex body arches gently in your arms, and a faint shiver moves through him. His sockets change shape; he gasps softly and lets his teeth part as he touches with two fingers at the luminous tip. Tiny, pearl-like bones gleam in his wrist as it bends out, thumb pushing in deep opposite as the fingers draw down and apart in a ‘v’ like… like he’s _presenting_.

“you like that?” he whispers shakily; it’s not rhetorical, it’s not banter. He asks like he _needs_ to know, sockets pained and vulnerable like everything he is… his need for your regard, his eagerness to please, the pleasure he’s giving himself is laid bare and raw for your approval. Like everything that makes him who he is spread out in front of you while he touches it, _present_ _ing_ it to you. Because holy shit, he _is_.

A bead of his magic trembles at the inner corner of his socket as his breath catches in a tiny sob; it falls as he hangs impaled and trembling on your silence.

You let out an abrupt, explosive exhale; apparently you stopped breathing at some point.

“Seems I do,” you huff back with a tiny smile, blushing and unaccountably flustered. His expression melts into pleased desire as he pants softly, tilting his head back even more as his sockets narrow to slits. You feel a renewed flush of warmth seeing him like this, so excited to have you here, to look at you and be held by you while he loves himself.

The carpals of his free hand slowly rubs the fabric over his femur up and down, petting himself with its softness idly, his eyes never leaving yours. He gathers the cloth up into a loose fist slow and suggestive as his thumb presses the center of his soul to open himself up, to make his soul ready for his body to go inside. Four phalanges spread wide now as his thumb circles deep and insistent, asking permission and giving it over and over because it feels so good to ask, so satisfying to answer.

He sees you watching when he slides the fisted cloth up his femur slow all the way to his pelvis, pets the front of his pubis delicately with the bundled cloth in his hand. His breath hitches hard when he moves it quick and delicate, goes out uneven when he uses it to curve underneath. He holds it there and bends his wrist slight and teasing, squeezing gently once in a while. He slowly brings his thumb back under his soul to glide along the rim as he shudders and lets out a soft, anticipatory little grunt.

His fingers spread wide inside himself again with the thumb tight in the cleft, and you see that subtle little bend he does at the tip joints right when he’s about to let it come out. You know what _that_ feels like. Your fingers dip into his waistband to toy gently with his lumbar spine as he takes the hitched, short little breaths the way he does when he’s getting ready to push.

“... _yeah_ ,” he whispers thickly, visibly excited by whatever expression you’re making. “here it comes…” His skull falls back even more when he lets out the soft, existentially satisfied exhale that you love so much, eye lights trembling as they try to stay focused on you. He squeezes his pubis hard and tight-shaky for a moment, then lets out a pleased little grunt through his teeth. His breath puffs out soft and even as he rubs unhurried circles with the gathered fabric.

What you just shared, what you’re sharing now… Sans’s relationship with his body, with his self, is a lot different than yours. He’s both more continuous and more contentious at the same time. He watches you realize, watches you _understand him_ and he moans low and breathy, finally giving in and letting his sockets slip shut as he pushes his fingers in deeper. You stroke his bones and whisper sweet nonsense to him; he shivers with the pleasure his body provides when he asks nicely, giving himself up to what you still have seething inside you. You hear the soft little hiccups he does when he stops pushing, followed by his tight-to-loose unwinding sigh when he puts his soul back into itself, back where it goes. He breathes easy and calm as he pets his sternum peacefully, and when his sockets open again he gives you an uncomplicated, loving smile.

He shifts to lean you back and lurches up to straddle you up high again, an elbow to either side of your head as he lies down heavily with a gratified sigh, pressing bodies together to share his resonating fulfillment with you. His bones are relaxed as he arches his ribcage into your chest and nudges your face with his, but you can feel heated resistance in his pelvis through both of your clothes. His breathing stays deep, goes a little shaky before he holds it, then deliberately steadies it back out. Apparently his body decided it wants a piece of the action now that he’s doing something it knows it likes.

“Hey. Do you want me to touch you, too?” His eye lights flick at you playfully before he shuts his sockets and shrugs.

“…eh. we’re bein’ lazy right now.” He moves down a bit more, then just goes limp on top of you like he’s going to sleep right there. “touching means _moving…_ ”

You exhale in amusement, because if he didn’t he’d just say no. “Want me to do it lazy style?”

“hmmm...” A socket cracks open, broad point inside wavering at you with lambent, mischievous interest. “i got high lazy standards.”

“Oh, really?” You grin, let your eyelids drift down. “Challenge accepted.”

He grins back, lets the socket close. Inhales long and sharp through his nasal cavity as you slide your open hand down the front of his shorts, cupping him firmly right where he’s all hot and bothered. There’s a short sound of near-ticklish pleasure huffed into your neck and shoulder when you waggle it; he’s definitely ready for some action.

“You can hump it if you get inspired,” you whisper like it’s a fascinating secret. His arms slide around you and he turns his skull to the side, relaxing into your touch with a pleased exhale. After a few minutes he starts tilting into your minimal movements, breath coming a little faster. You’ve been stroking his back lightly, but now you let your hand drift down to the back of his pelvis, hook your thumb over his ilium between his shirt and shorts and move him back and forth, making him groan softly.

“… _fuck_ ,” he whispers, and you feel tension in him even after he shivers. “will you put your fingers in there? sweet spot’s actually inside.” He holds his breath for a second at your whispered agreement, then lets it out. “use two, okay?” he adds as you feel around with purpose. “jus’ the one feels too...i dunno. pointy.” What you’ve been petting isn’t anything human-shaped, so you figure he knows better than you do. This like a neat-folded triangle, soft and small.

“okay, but...” You frown and stroke his hip soothingly. “let me know if it hurts you.”

“k.”

You push at him with two of your fingers, circle them a bit before giving up and just holding them out for him. He lifts his pelvis until the angle’s right for whatever this is, then takes both your stiffened fingers in one eager and quick-smooth motion.

“burns a little,” he says quietly as he settles back down on you. “jus’ gotta give it a second.” He hugs you and relaxes more, rubs his face across your shoulder, then puts it in your neck and inhales deeply. “mmmm. you smell _real_ good right now,” he adds as his body tightens on your fingers, and for some reason it makes you blush.

He spends a few minutes clenching down on you experimentally and breathing calmly; you’re finding this pretty relaxing too. Just drifting together on easy intimacy.

“You know… it’s a good thing you didn’t ask _me_ to name them either,” you giggle quietly, rubbing his back with your free hand until he shivers out more tension. He rubs his face in you some more, whuffling air through his nasal cavity all over your chest and arms, making satisfied breathy sounds. “You’d end up with, uh. Nicknames. They’d be like the seven dwarves or something…they make you act different.” He snorts encouragingly, and you slip fingers inside the back of his shirt to stir the permeable magic between his spinal processes. “Biggie and Twofer; um... Cuddles… _Bitey_ …”

He’s shaking with laughter, then makes a tight sound as he moves his hips around. “ohhh, t-there we go,” he breathes creakily, making you shiver at the catch in the middle. Another tiny noise when you bend your fingers, so you do it again. “feels good,” he whispers. “what’s this one?”

“Snuffles,” you snerk as his hot breath puffs in and out of your shirt again, then you laugh together. A rush of inspiration must have gripped him, because now he’s executing a lazy grind against your hand, tilting back sharply once in a while to generate a little friction inside. He’s small and shallow in there, and two fingers feels like it’s probably plenty. He moans slow and tight when you caress the back of his skull with your free hand, tucking his head against you and petting him there, too.

“you weren’t kidding,” he groans with feeling. “s’like i could fall asleep jus like this...”

You snort. “Well, don’t. Not yet at least.”

“mm. i’ll try to be up for it, but i can’t make any promises,” he giggles, then makes a pleased huff when you beckon him inside. There’s something firming up there on the front wall, tucked in toward his pubic crest like… like where the urethral sponge would be on a...oh. _That’s_ the sweet spot he was talking about. It’s an internal clitoris. Gotcha.

“ _fuck_ ,” he hisses as a light layer of magic sheds into your fingers. “… mm _mh_. lotta monsters call this kinda shape ‘cunny’”, he whispers vaguely, horizontally riding your hand with incredible leisure as he toys with the soft hairs at the nape of your neck. “s’what rabbits got.”

“That’s kind of adorable?” you murmur, grinning helplessly and rubbing your nose along his skull too when you turn your face to the side. It’s endearingly crude and vaguely old-fashioned at the same time.

“ _yeah_ ,” Sans replies enthusiastically. “’s cute, right?”

“Wait, _all_ of them?”

“yeah,” he says again, shivers hard and sloppy until he grunts with it, hugs on to you tight. Well. There’s no reason why not, you suppose.

Both of you are barely moving, but there’s a slow, rhythmic shudder moving through him, increasing the longer he grinds against you. Not all of his genitalia shapes are able to climax, several of them not in the same way you do, and a fair amount of the time he just doesn’t care to. That being the case, you’re pretty damn sure he wants to right now. His breathing goes ragged without ever growing _labored_ , then he holds it for a long minute.

“oh _hh_ f-fuck,” he gushes, voice stutter-thick with something that isn’t really tension. Like he’s an old lady and this is the best foot massage he’s ever had or something. “you-you’re so s-s… _oh_ _hh_ _god_ ,” he whisper-moans, long and slow. “’m gonna come, okay?” he hiccups, the slow grind of his pelvis going shaky and uneven.

“ _Yeah_ , come for me,” you whisper, bending your fingers rapidly against his resonating, resistant magic as he tightens down on you. He hugs you hard and pushes his face into you while he sucks in a big breath; it huffs out in short little bursts as his pelvis starts to jerk. He mewls like someone who just saw something unbearably cute happen, then it wheedles out to a quiet, choked moan as he shivers and spasms around you. As his climax eases, a nasal urgency invades the sounds he muffles in your shirt, then he huffs and sniffs you some more. A sound like that gives you a lot of information.

“Fill er up?” you whisper wickedly into the side of his skull, and he nods rapidly. He still sounds surprised when your hand leaves his skull to grip his pelvis. He chokes off a noise as you lift him, then lets it out as you slide a third finger into his slick-thrumming, tight opening. His sharp inhale catches as you use your grip to push him down firmly, angling your fingers deep enough to hit resistance. A loose, breathy moan shakes out through his teeth as you tickle-beckon inside as fast as you can; he sheds out hard with a deep tingle. When you turn your head sharply, you can see that his sockets are blank little new moons downturned on his iridescent-sweaty face, and the crooked little space between his teeth hangs open now.

“ohhh shhh-sh-shit,” he hiss-whispers laxly, arms tucked around underneath you, his hands loose fists at your shoulders as he wobbles and grunts. He’s really shedding out a lot across his zygomatic arches and frontal bone, dampening your shirt. You use your grip on his pelvis to angle him, then move him back and forth with it to give him some of the friction he likes.

“aww, _fuck_ me…” It’s a deep, gratified whisper. “y-yeah, jus’ like that...”

He comes again almost immediately. When he tips over the edge you feel it inside him, and some instinct tells you to push deep, wiggle your fingers rapidly. He moves like someone being fruitlessly shaken awake in slow motion, a harsh rasp in his short, guttural exhales. His skull lolls against your chest as you slowly spread your digits apart to push in and out, go a little slower and hold him wide open; he spends so much magic inside that your fingering makes at least two impressive squelching sounds before your body absorbs it. You compress your fingers and slow down even more when he starts making his descending noises, the ones that start high and devolve into satisfied little grunts.

“ohhh…oh, that’s the stuff,” he moans after a minute. “that’s...mmmh. okay, ‘m good.”

You pull your fingers out gently; he smiles with narrowed sockets and inhales sharp-shaky through his nasal aperture when you give the outside a fond little pet. He sighs it out, then slowly tilts back and gives you a surprisingly energetic grin for someone made of bones managing to lie on you bonelessly.

“What?” you grunt suspiciously.

“you wanna go again, dont’cha.” He’s leering at you, smug as hell.

You let out an explosive breath that turns into a giggly nod. “This is why I always laugh when people talk about how many ‘times’ they’ve had sex,” you say, spreading your arms so he can shimmy up and whuffle into your hair and ear until you squeak-snort the way he likes. “I always wonder what they’re counting,” you add, letting it trail off into a moan as he rubs his face in your neck.

“people do that?” he asks idly, sounding like he doesn’t really care what anyone else is doing right now as his smooth, warm hands glide up inside your shirt. “mmh...wanna take our clothes off?”

“You offering to do the work?”

“heh. yeah, jus’ sit up a lil for me.”

You do, and somehow he ends up kneeling opposite you, coaxing you to sit on your heels and lean back against the wall once you’re both nice and naked. His palm’s planted on the wall above you, and his face is inches away from yours watching with gently pained sockets as he pleasures you with his fingers.

He starts out with slow, sloppy teasing at your wet opening with delicate bone fingertips, then moving back and forth until hard, nubbly phalanges ghost over your clit. His fingers spread out and glide slow-loose circles all around, then move close together and rub light and repetitive, the pressure building until you start to feel floaty, pushing your pelvis out into his touch shamelessly.

“you’re so _wet_ ,” he whispers low and breathy, sockets growing pained as his smooth fingertips test your entrance, then slide in to fill you when he sees your expression. “love it when you get like this,” he continues, barely-there voice quivering along with the points in his sockets, “s’like getting me off makes you so-, so _excited…_ ” He’s panting in earnest now as he moves and curls his fingers inside you, a sharp bend in his wrist to rub outside that wouldn’t be possible for a human hand. He presses his face to your sweaty cheek briefly to nudge hard with a soft, subvocal little whine, then pulls back to look again. “i can’t take it,” he whispers, “want you _so much_...”

You gasp and lift your chin, reaching out to hold his shoulders as his hand disappears from the wall. He gives a subtle little lurch back, and his breathing goes ragged as it puffs out onto your face gently.

You look down and see three white phalanges flash as they move in and out of his dark, soft-folded iridescence rapidly; whatever he sees on your face results in a raggedly heartfelt moan from somewhere in his skull.

“can’t take it,” he sobs shakily, “makes me wanna come for you.”

You glance up at the dazed-enamored urgency on his face, and your sudden and immediate climax takes you both by surprise.

“Oh, oh fuck,” you gasp high and breathy, eyes squeezing shut as you grind your pleasure out into his hard, flexible palm, barely keeping your balance and trying not to yank on his spindly bone shoulders, especially when they’re moving this much. “Fuck, _Sans_ …” you growl, gritting your teeth and gasp-snorting embarrassingly with the strength of the exquisite tension and release tearing through you. You’re not the name-calling type, either. Wow. You shiver and arch so hard you feel your head thunk back into the wall, then manage to focus your eyes again on his sweatily fascinated face. You look down and see his fingers moving in himself faster, slowing on his other hand where they draw it out for you.

“Sans...” It comes out a needy whine.

“yeah?” he moans, stroking the junction of your trembling thigh with his thumb.

“Can I kiss it?”

“oh fuck…” he slurs weakly, looking like he might faint with desire at the prospect. “ _yeah_. you want me to-” Your arms are already around him, his fingers slipping out of you wetly as you flop him back on the bed with clumsy, frantic haste. He spreads his femurs for you eagerly, the texture of his eye lights shifting as he watches you hunker down between them. His astonished, nasal cry as your hot mouth finds his soft-spicy little triangle makes you feel like your magic-stuffed soul might just melt right out from between your legs.

The noise he makes when you push your tongue up inside and find his sweet spot with it is even _better_ , somehow. His whole body arches back, sockets clamped shut and his neck craning until it almost looks painful as he scrabbles blindly at the tangled, strewn bedding over his head.

“o-oh _hh_ my god,” he cough-whispers out, then loses words entirely when you curve your hooked fingers into his obturator foramina, pull gently to tilt him up for the perfect angle, then tongue fuck him senseless right on the money. His quietly strangled grunts squeeze out in syncopation with his erratic movements, and he’s actually gripping your right shoulder with his creepy skeleton _toes_ , bone leg cocked out wildly. You feel a very intense, loosening shudder go through his integral magic around your tongue, and then-

He sheds out completely right in your mouth with a quavering, half-choked wail. You swallow some and accidentally breathe a little more, don't give a shit and just lave the flat of your tongue greedily across his suddenly bare, trembling-wet pubis.

He grunts explosively through gritted teeth, grabs you tight with his legs and starts pushing at your mouth with his hesitant little nudges. He jumps and yaps when one of your teeth glances off his left pubic tubercle, and you use your gentle hold in his foramina to limit and guide his movements. It doesn’t work quite as well as you’d hoped because he’s apparently losing his goddamned mind, you’re fucking loving it, and then inspiration strikes to put your lips over your teeth and clamp your tongue hard between them. You use your grip to move his whole pelvis in circles to the left, then move your head in circles to the right: a steady and inevitable grind you can keep up indefinitely.

Sans uses a pillow to muffle his long, guttural cries in between hitching breaths; something starts to shake up almost violently from deep inside him, bones rattling and stilling intermittently as breaths turn to gasps. You circle your tongue on him mercilessly, and his arms shake as he claws the blankets in fruitless desperation. His shivering intensifies until he’s clacking, then beyond that into something approaching vibration until he arches back hard and still.

A long, creaking exhale sharpens needle-tight until his deep voice threads out onto it, getting louder until he literally _screams_ his astounded release hoarsely into a tight-clutched wad of bedding. Long, wracking shimmies move through his whole body over and over, but you don’t slow or falter despite the bumpy ride; the smooth bones and coiled magic under your tongue doesn’t get oversensitive the same way genitalia can. Eventually he quiets enough that you notice the nasal, breathy moans you’re making as you lick him insistently, and you don’t slow until his bones can’t clack anymore when he shivers.

You don’t _stop_ until he’s completely floppy.

It takes a while.

“it’s one thing to know that can theoretically happen,” Sans mumbles what could be minutes or hours later, but is definitely many whispered declarations of love and enjoyment (and two bottles of ketchup) later. “s’ a whole nother when ya make me do it on your face,” he giggles faintly, giving you another big hug and sighing with incredulous contentment.

“What?” you ask, although you think you know.

“makin’ me feel like that when ‘m jus’ bones,” he sighs, and you nod.

“… _phew_ ,” he sighs, “haven’t done that since…’fore it started coming out for you? that one time, rubbing together like we do. when we thought it was yours, but it was _me_.”

“Mmmmm…. that _one_ time,” you purr tauntingly into the side of his skull like you’re recalling an especially memorable dessert. You give it a little kiss with sore lips as his bones try and fail to clack once again. The sweetest silence, for sure. “You haven’t done it like that by yourself?”

He laughs softly, shakes his skull with a sleepy, satisfied expression. “heh…you think i ever put in that kinda work on my _own_?” He snorts, rubs his wrists on his forehead and peers over at you sidelong. “nah. both times it happened was like...the most i’ve ever been turned on in my life.”

“Every time with you is the most turned on I’ve ever been in my life,” you sigh, and he blushes and giggles. “Hmmm… when you come, it’s like it’s...slower? Well. It was the times I felt it.” You frown thoughtfully. “Was it different like this?

“mmm… yeah, a lil bit. felt even more...all-over? like you were licking my _soul_ or something,” he finishes, flopping over onto his front and taking half the softest blanket underneath with him. Fucker. He’s making himself blush and visibly loving every minute of it.

“Oh _really_?” You peer over as he hides half his face in a blanket, then turns back with an open socket peeping right back at you playfully. “What would happen if I actually did that?” you ask, and he’s basically green now. Shedding across the forehead, too. Nice.

“eheheheheh… prob’ly do the same thing as touchin’, jus’ kinkier,” he whispers, then snickers some more. “after that, pretty sure i’ll let you lick _anything you want_.”

“You might want to be careful with that kind of offer,” you grin shamelessly. “Apparently not everything you have can _handle_ me licking it. Speaking of which, sorry I murdered Snuffles with my tongue.”

He clonks your shoulder gently with his forehead, chuckling weakly.

“… _snuffles_ ,” he snuffles in amusement. “heh. makes sense, though.” He leans back and fixes you with a curious grin. “what was the nickname for the one when me n al were fighting and you hand-fucked me?”

You look at him with surprise.

“If you think I could come up with a better name than ‘Sans the Skeleton’s Cursed Pussy Strikes Again’, you are sorely mistaken.”

He gapes at you just long enough to make you blush and regret every time you’ve ever opened your mouth… and he starts laughing so hard his sockets leak right off the bat. Then he literally rolls around, despite being tangled up in an increasingly bony blanket burrito with you.

“What?” you quack indignantly after a bit, feebly trying to shove him away, but that just sets him off again.

“… _stars_ ,” he wheezes eventually, wiping at his sockets inefficiently with his decidedly non-absorbent fingerbones. He’s really just pushing it around. “i….oh, fuck...sometimes when how i feel bout somethin’ comes outta your mouth...heh heh _hee_ ….” His words choke off into more laughter.

“Is that not what you said?” you ask, starting to get really curious...and catching the giggles along with it.

“nope,” he coughs, shoulders still shaking. “didn’t say _anything_ , remember?”

“Okay...I’m going to do science to you now.”

He grins brightly in unfeigned delight at your announcement, and it just sort of crushes your heart to dust and resurrects it at the same time. Holy _shit_ , you love him. Yeah, you’re never getting to sleep at this rate, and you don’t care anymore.

“ _Soft_ science,” you promise in a whisper. “Say ‘Sans the Skeleton’s Cursed Pussy Strikes Again’ in your language.”

He lurches heavily over on his back (stealing the remainder of the Softest Blanket), speaks aloud and signs at the same time.

“My Recurring Cunt is a Rude Ghost,” he flaps out prompt and bouncy, and you throw your head back and shriek with mirth until he scrabbles his phalanges to seal your lips, hypocritically laughing even louder than you are.

“c’mon, what’d i say? he moans wheezily, finally uncovering your mouth to pull insistently (very gently) at your arm.

“You said,” you take a deep breath, widen your eyes, and take an intuitive gamble.

“Mi coño recurrente es un fantasma _rudo_ _,_ ” you squeak, and you both honk like donkeys and fake-wrestle with the strength of lethargic earthworms, mistranslating increasingly vulgar things with his speech impediment until you make Sans shortcut you to the bathroom before you piss the bed.

 

He’s washing his hands while you take a leak, and another thought occurs to you.

“I really hope they didn’t hear us,” you mutter, shamefaced. “Figures the one time I’m brave enough to fuck in a full house is also the time I make you scream,” you add, realizing it sounds a lot more smug out loud than it did in your head.

Then you notice Sans has gone still. He’s just staring at his hands as the water flows over them, washing your physical substance away with water he can’t drink, motionless.

Magic slides off his face into the sink.

“Sans?” you say, finish up quickly and come to stand by him, leaning a hand on the counter and tilting your head to get a better look at his expression.

“they’re _asleep_ ,” he whispers, and you turn off the water even though you can understand him. All the music’s still going, but the rest…no thumping, no chatter.

“Are you serious?” you ask quietly.

“yeah,” he says, still not moving. “fell asleep right… right wherever they were.”

“Everyone?”

“even mettaton,” he breathes, astounded. You gape at him, but he doesn’t look at you.

“s-still got an hour,” he chokes, and you take his hands into yours, find a hand towel and dry them off.

“Hey,” you say quietly, but...yeah. You don’t really know where you were going with that.

You don’t know what to say. You both just sort of stand there butt ass naked on the cold tiles, waiting to see if everything ends yet again. Then you sigh.

“It’s the same as always,” you whisper. His small, dim eye lights flicker, then lift to your face. You smile, delirious with exhaustion but adamant nevertheless. You turn the water back on hot, and wet the towel to use it to clean both of you up a little more.

“Let’s just go back to bed, okay? Maybe if we’re lucky we can join everyone else.”

He closes his sockets and lets out a slow breath.

Then he nods.

 

He turns off the light once you return to your disheveled, incredibly cozy nest. You lean out briefly to unlid the wastebasket and add the disgraced hand towel to it. You didn’t want to leave it in the bathroom, and you sure as hell don’t want anyone else using it after the things you’ve done to it. The glow of Sans’s stuff reappears briefly, but once you replace the book the only thing you can see in here are the points in Sans’s sockets.

They’re not actually _lights_ ; they don’t cast illumination on anything else in the room, which is much darker than either of you keeps your own. But no matter how dark it is...you can always see his eyes. Like stars, they feel eternal and unfathomably distant.

So close you could just reach out and touch them.

“You can still see me, right?” you ask him quietly.

“yeah,” he whispers quietly. “i can always see you.”

You reclaim The Softest Blanket, the drape it over both of you as you wiggle up into the embrace of his cool bones with a shiver. Turn around to let him be the big spoon for a change, shiver some more as his smooth-and-textured face rubs into the back of your neck, dips down to nudge the spot between your shoulderblades.

“it feel weird not being able to see anything?” he breathes idly after a while. His hard, flexible palm runs up and down your upper arm.

“Yeah,” you answer. “Sometimes. But...when it’s really, truly dark…my brain comes up with stuff to see. They’re like...hallucinations?” You laugh, barely audible. “It’s how humans brains do. Even in like, lightless underground caves ot controlled lab settings. If you wave your hand in front of your face, your brain makes a picture of the outline of your hand.”

“no shit?” his whisper’s shaky and warm against your back. So is the press of his smooth, glassy teeth. His hand slides under your arm and around your front, phalanges playing light over your belly and chest.

“No shit,” you confirm. “It’s absolutely impossible that your _eyes_ could actually see anything. But your brain...it knows your hand. Like people say sometimes… ‘I know it like that back of my hand.’ You know what it looks like, you can _feel_ it….so you can see it anyways, even when you can’t.”

His shed magic tingles wetly between your shoulderblades; his integral magic brushes hot and firm against your naked ass.

“sorry,” he whispers, voice barely decorating his heating breath as he hunches away.

You exhale slow and rough with renewed and shockingly visceral desire, shiver and press back into his pelvis to feel his soft gasp against the back of your neck, to feel his arms tighten around you reflexively.

“That’s what you feel like to me,” you whisper shakily, then grab his bone fingers and pull them to your lips. “What we did. The promise,” you whisper into his hand, then close your fingers around to make it a fist, to hold your words tight inside flesh and bone like a secret in the slowly warming, inky-soft darkness.

“You’re like my hand in the dark, like everything I am inside can _see_ you even when my eyes can’t. I feel it in my soul, no matter where you are.”

A tiny, dry sob. He pushes hot and helpless against your bare ass again; a firm length that seeks you, so eager to please.

You turn around to face him, pull him close, then even closer.

“Hey,” you whisper against his face. His sockets are closed; you can’t see his eyes. “Hey.”

Another little catch in his breath. “sorry,” he whispers again, a shiver going through his bones when his hot magic brushes your belly, a tiny grunt as he bends so it doesn’t touch you.

“I want you,” you admit in a gush, low and trembling. “Here. Come here,” you urge softly, guiding him to lie on your body again. He mewls low and needy in his nonexistent throat, hands already caressing you hungrily.

“don’t wanna make you sore in there,” he objects weakly, but you’re already shaking your head.

“I _want you_ ,” you repeat plaintively, and he shudders violently when you open your legs and pull him in towards you. You feel his femur caress the underside of your thigh; his breathing’s hot and ragged against your neck. He gasps when his tiny, smooth-hard fingertips touch the molten cleft between your thighs hesitantly, then smooth your wetness across lush and messy as he groans.

“… _fuck_ ,” he hiss-sobs, clutching you tight with his other arm. “ _love_ you, okay? love you...”

“...Please?” you whisper, tilting your hips up until your genitalia brushes his blindly. He muffles a helpless mewl in your shoulder as his shaking fingers depart, then return to guide his blunt, drawing-resonant heat to your entrance.

“this what you want?” he shakes out softly into your ear, heated words through hot-smooth teeth making you grunt and clutch him with need.

“Yeah,” you breathe, then let out a strangled moan, arching what feels like your whole body up into him as he presses carefully inside you. It’s big; he breathes ragged and fills you slow, bone fingers nudging to aid his entry and spread your slickness, easing back and forth so it doesn’t catch. When it gets to the end there’s still a little more, and both his arms wrap tight around your shoulders. His nasal bone digs into your skin, and despite his care he pushes hard with a low cry until he’s all the way inside.

“fuck,” he gasps, voice breaking in a dry little sob. “you okay?” He shakes and tries to...pull back, maybe? If it was, he didn’t quite manage, and you’re just as glad because he’s inside you exactly how you want him.

“Yeah,” you groan, wrap your legs around him to hold him just where he is, so full of him you can taste it. “ _Yeah_ ,” you repeat, panting as his magic sheds light and tingling, connecting you even deeper than flesh and bone. You squeeze him; he makes a cracked noise and jumps a little. “Are _you_ okay?” you say, low and harsh with passion. He nods into you, panting and shivering.

Traces into your thigh: _I love yo_ _u_

Traces into your shoulder: _Can I move?_

You wrap an arm around his back, thread into his processes up high. Slide fingers along his iliac crest to feel him tense, then hold it lightly.

“I kinda just want you to fuck the shit out of me,” you gush in a low, raspy whisper. The guttural noise you make when he pulls back sounds almost mournful; you pull him back in with your grip on his pelvis as he makes a short, strangled grunt. All the way in, stretching your limits… almost painful until you tilt your hips back and...yeah, _there_ he goes. Angling him in towards the back, there’s more room.

“I love you too, okay? I’m not sore, just...” You groan as he fills you again, then again, pressing right up into the deepest parts of you with heat and pressure, drawing and tingling. “Just _really_ sensitive,” you pant, then stop his hand as it creeps toward your clit. “I don’t want to come yet,” you whisper shakily.

Bones taps against skin: _You’re_ _already_ _close?_

“Yeah,” you sob as he thrusts sharp but shallow with another strangled grunt. “ _Fuck_...can you see me?”

He pants and thrusts sharp again, then you feel him shift until he’s up on his elbows; you remove your fingers from between his processes so they don’t get pinched. A low, harsh moan tears its way out of your throat when the broad white points of his eyes come into existence in utter dark; you can’t tell if they’re close or far despite his ragged breath on your lips.

It’s like the universe became his sockets, and the only thing that exists is his eyes.

The only thing they see is you.

“y-yeah,” he manages aloud.

“How do I want it?” you grit, pushing your body up against his. He pants silently, but he pushes inside you angled towards the back until he fills you all the way, then a little more. You groan, pull his pelvis. “How do I want it?”

He sobs brokenly. “like this?” He pulls back slow, then slides in faster...all the way. You hear the low, dangerous purr that comes out of your throat, and his eyes quiver and expand when he hears it, too.

It’s one of those things that seems like it should hurt, but it doesn’t. It’s just intense, and amazing, and…

(so close)

He sees it, and his hands come up to hold your face. His nasal bone touches the tip of your nose, and you watch his eyes as he starts to fuck you exactly how you want. Hard, deep thrusts, but slow and gliding. They take a second or three to complete. He pants vocally, bones shaking with the pleasure his body provides when you both ask nicely.

Your hand slips between you, and you rub your clit light and insistent.

“fuck,” he whispers. “gonna come for me?”

“Yep,” you manage, “What about you?” Wow….yeah. You’re already at the cusp.

“dunno if i can,” he pants, but he’s fibbing. He doesn’t know if he can without getting ‘carried away’. You hold your breath and teeter at the edge, and his gliding rhythm goes short-quick and deep to match what he feels happening in your body. Like something’s shivering out from inside you to meet him, a howling storm of need that’s ready to scour you bare. Then you come, and it’s like a flash of light that wobbles out into darkness, divides into dangerous, lambent points that turn into-

His eyes.

You sob out a few curse words, then scramble to try and get your legs up over his shoulders because you want that intense, thrilling angle back toward the front. Yeah….something good’s going to happen. He figures it out, helps you get where you want to be.

He leans in hard, folds you up right in half and gets his forehead pressed to yours. You groan like you’re dying, watch his eyes expand almost translucent as he fucks into your quivering, slick-tight body so hard and deep you can taste him in your throat. You growl breathlessly, wrap your arms up tight around his upper body to keep him right there, right in _this spot_ , and he gives you everything he’s got over and over.

“fuck!” he whisper-shouts against your mouth, “oh _hh_ , f-fu _ck_ , m’ gonna...” he pants and thrusts into you sharp and hard; you take him all the way to his trembling bones.

“Race you,” you croak, then your eyes must close because his finally disappear, and you gush out hot and wet all over him, all over yourself to drip down the crack of your ass into a molten puddle on the sheets. A low, throaty noise comes out of you along with the wet slap of his magic as it slams into you; you gush out again and shake all over as a waves of sensation tear through your body recklessly. It’s like you’re turning inside out and then melting; it reminds you of his fuck-drunk voice asking “am i coming?”; dazed with sensation so strong you can’t tell what it is anymore, only that you want it. You _need_ it. He leans over even more somehow, his skull sliding to the side of your face, turning in toward you so you can hear his tight whine getting louder.

He must be leaning all his weight on his skull because both his thin-boned hands clutch your ass; you shout breathlessly as he drives into you just so, then pushes all your fat towards where he penetrates you with a rough growl. He pulls almost all the way out, then slams back in, stays deep and gives you short, hard thrusts until his hands spread you open again, and his voice gets driven out of him wildly as his movements go erratic, a low hum that shakes out a staccato accompaniment. He tries to say something, but his breath just hitches in a few times, the last gasp of coherence choked out of reach.

He lists to the side as his bones go loose; his hips jerk out the undeniable, hard-stuttered rhythm of his climax into your sensitive body, accompanied by a deep tingle as he spends magic thickly inside you at the same time. You can feel the slick-spongy give in the hot tip of his genitalia as completely as if you held it between thumb and forefinger, sliding right into the pocket in front of your cervix to make you gush one more time, sobbing weakly in overstimulated bliss. A surprised, breathy moan unravels from the depths of him and blows hot into your neck as his zenith ebbs to afterglow, and then you both just fall over sideways like tipped cows, his body still inside yours.

Then you fall asleep just like that, a storm of unconsciousness taking you both in unison as strong as the pleasure you just shared.

 

His eyes are the first thing you see when you open yours; daylight shoves its way stubbornly through the weave of the blackout curtains to outline you both in directionless illumination. The side of your ass is glued to the fitted sheet with your own come, his hipbone stayed on your leg which is now completely numb, and you both still exist.

You sigh out the deep waking breath you just sucked in, considering.

“Looks like this ending’s gonna stick,” you rattle, then clear your throat. Screaming breakfast noises are happening two floors away, and you can already smell something burning. The playlist had ended at some point last night, but now it’s back in force.

“think we need a shower ‘fore we can face the music,” he replies, voice at least as raspy as yours. You holler as he finally rolls off your leg, and he just laughs at you. That fucker.

“ _Tub_ ,” you insist, moaning as you rub pins and needles out of your leg.

“okay,” he agrees readily enough.

Then he gets out of bed and grabs your meds without being asked.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this installment of Advanced Monsterfucking Techniques for Thoughtful Adults Part 18: What To Do If You’re Accidentally Waterboarded by a Higgs-like Field of Skeleton Jizz
> 
> The thing about seeing your own body in complete darkness is real: https://rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=7582
> 
> Also, I guess I never explained the touch-language thing? That’s not magic, it’s a kind of tactile sign language people who are Deafblind use.  
> http://www.deafblind.com/slmorgan.html
> 
> Donkeyskin by Charles Perrault (1695; usually omitted from collections d/t themes of incest): https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault11.html


	71. A Certain Tenderness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hozier – Shrike  
> https://youtu.be/EWLqdAJbu0A
> 
> [discussion of past sexual abuse]
> 
> Oh man. This chapter hurt my feelings, even though most of it was written quite some time ago. Upsettio’s Level: roughly equivalent to maybe Chapter 43 (there is a myelitis that never goes out). I feel like there’s positivity and catharsis, but you might want to skip the middle part between the *** depending on how comfortable you are knowing some stuff about Papyrus’s um...let’s go with ‘sexuality’, and the way he feels about himself.  
> This might come as slightly less of a surprise if you read the Papyton sidefic chapters, and let yourself notice what they were actually doing instead of the compelling narrative I gave you involving how they feel about each other.  
> Speaking of which, there's a sidefic chapter takes place between last chapter and this one involving an important conversation between Papyrus and Toriel. You can read it before, after, or not at all:  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/17952167/chapters/46894045

The day of Papyrus and Mettaton’s wedding dawns bright and clear, and seems inclined to stay that way.

It’s July already and time seems to be doing what it’s supposed to, although considering your usual experience of it, it could be hard to tell. According to Sans (and Alphys) it is.

That’s not to say everything’s been normal or anything. Almost everyone’s had a tendency to fall into strange little moods, especially Sans, Papyrus, and Frisk. Papyrus has of course been “SO BUSY” planning and designing he hasn’t had much time for serious or deep conversation, and instead has a tendency to fall still and silent at random intervals, staring into the middle distance blankly.

Frisk’s even more taciturn than usual, although they do seem to be spending a lot of time with MK, which is reassuring. MK’s gregarious nature always seems to bring out the side of Frisk that’s lively, kind, and sometimes disconcertingly flirtatious. Sans has been more of a slippery snail than usual; even Alphys admits she’s not sure what he’s up to when he disappears for a day or two at a time. He also falls into odd moods, talkative rather than just sleeping through his depressive episodes like he usually would, and the stuff he talks about makes less sense than usual.

You feel great since the physical effects of Papyrus taking you to bed with him two nights before are lingering strongly, in addition to a little magic he pushed into your hips and shoulders when you’d woken up. Nevertheless, you and Sans are beached fatly upon the lofty pile of beanbags and couch cushions, piled up under a canopy on the lawn near the gazebo, which has several stories just like the massive layer cake under a clear case nearby.

They’re duplicates of each other; the gazebo itself is apparently made of something called “monster snow” shaped by Papyrus, which won’t melt in the sun because of some reason given after you’d already started walking away. It’s not your fault Papyrus doesn’t listen when you say no explanations are necessary, and it’s not his fault that if you get worn out by his intensity you’ll just leave.

Sans is lying on your body facedown, and you have your knees tented up with your hands behind your head. Every once in a while you drift fingers down to toy with his vertebral processes, or sneak them up his shirt to caress a fused floating rib, savoring his delighted little tickle-shivers. You’ll never get over how much he loves being affectionate with you in public.

Shonda’s at one of the trestle tables threading together real-flower garlands according to the grid designs Papyrus sketched out to be followed meticulously; she was extremely flattered to have been chosen to be amongst the trusted few allowed to handle and arrange the delicate blooms. It’s just her, Toriel, and Angie; even Frisk hadn’t made the cut. Considering how closely the latter’s shrug at being informed of their required presence elsewhere resembled relief, you suppose that’s just as well. Along with her pride, Shonda also looks like she’s considering wandering over to tell you to “stop doing it” again; she’s a smart girl and doesn’t, since Sans will just tell her a bunch of teen-rated jokes that make her blush until she gives up. Puberty’s rough. Yep, she’s already giving you a sour look and turning up her nose at your teasing grin.

You and Sans positively dote on her; the fact that the doting most often takes the form of relentless ribbing and occasional pranks gives her less time to get all mopey, or even worse to start fights she doesn’t know how to finish like she’s been doing lately. It’s a budding tendency everyone’s trying to nip. Sans says it reminds him of Frisk; you wonder if it’s because they’re both Perseverance. He’s considering a dispensation and actually giving her a monster phone for her next birthday, thinking it might keep her distracted enough to stop being so contentious, at least for a little while. You told him he better clear that with Ange first if he doesn’t want to get his ass kicked, and he’d just winked.

He’s wearing a pair of massive, lumpy socks Undyne knitted special for today, studded with hotglued ribbons and a rhinestone or two. They’re black and white, and his slippers are a new bone-white pair (a size bigger than usual to accommodate the sheer girth of the socks), and otherwise he’s dressed exactly the same as usual.

You’re letting your sweat and Sans’s weight wrinkle up your fancy monster slacks-and-tunic, which has become your default concession to formality on any occasion that it seems called for.

Speaking of alarming tendencies, you can feel that Sans has gone all wonky and thinky-thoughts on top of you. He’s been quiet for an hour or so now without falling asleep, so you’re not exactly surprised. He usually talks about the same thing when he gets like this, so you’re prepared.

“What’s got your bones in a bunch, O shining star of my loins?” you ask quietly, rubbing his back under the hood and over the hoodie.

“i think what he was trying to do worked,” Sans says slowly. He means the same person he always means when he starts talking about it. The other brother who isn’t anymore.

“think maybe us ending up there… here. it wasn’t a mistake at all, jus’ another lie. he was trying to make it so skeletons never existed… ‘cept for us. cause we exist everywhere n everywhen. me, papyrus...and him, i guess.”

You exhale slowly, wait a little bit. Watch the flowers get garlanded.

“Why?”

“cause he was bad,” Sans whispers. “maybe he got caught, maybe...he was trying to get away. do whatever he wanted somewhere no one knew any better, make it so no one could follow us. change what would happen.”

“Like...burning the bridge behind him?” you ask, aghast.

“guess so,” he says, voice flat and empty like it does when he gets like this.

“So… why do you think that now?” you ask when it seems he’s not going to continue. It’s better he gets it out now, otherwise it’ll just linger.

“papyrus went to alphie, had her check a few things for him,” he rasps quietly. “turns out he can’t have kids either.”

“Oh,” you whisper. Clear your throat awkwardly. “Do you… is he sad?”

“dunno,” he sighs. “he’s not...like me, otherwise. won’t make him sick,” he elaborates, surprising you. “he’s not like me other places, too. it only makes one thing, far as he knows” he says, officially shocking the everloving _shit_ out of you, because you know exactly what he means. He’s talking about Papyrus’s genitalia. You try to pretend like you didn’t stop breathing, but when he looks up at you he just looks vaguely unhappy rather than utterly mortified.

“Are you saying you’re supposed to somehow…be your own ancestor?”

He shrugs. “it’s a possibility.”

“Is it possible that’s just how skeletons are?” you try. “Maybe you don’t reproduce that way. Or..”

He shakes his skull again.

“alphie says she can tell where…how it was supposed to be, and why it’s not. s’like a…genetic thing would be for humans.” He glances at you briefly. “not like we’re the only monsters that ever weren’t able to have kids.”

He sighs.

“dunno what i _am_ , readz,” he whispers soft and slow.

“You’re from the future,” you whisper.

“one of em,” he shrugs. “might be this one. maybe not, though. starting to think not. specially not...now.”

Because neither he or Papyrus can have children. Not with humans, or with monsters either.

“You think you won’t exist,” you breathe, petting his back lightly. “That’s what you mean. You….exist _now_ , but you….you won’t exist. Then.”

“i’m real glad if i won’t ever exist, ta be honest.” Sans’s face looks harder even than bone. “no one should have ta go through that.”

“But _you_ still did,” you point out very quietly.

“i still shouldn’t have hadto,” he replies. There’s kindness in that assertion, even if it’s a sore spot. Kindness and love toward the brutalized child he used to be, even if he can’t remember him.

Even if he won’t ever exist.

“But...” you frown. “Why did he try to get you to kill _Frisk_? Did they even have anything to do with it?”

“he didn’t want the barrier to get destroyed,” he says tightly.

“But Frisk didn’t destroy the barrier,” you say slowly. “Flowey did.”

He just goes quiet again. Until he isn’t.

“we never really talked bout determination, did we.”

“I’ve seen it mentioned in some of the materials Alphys shared, and she...she talked about it with me a little, too. She says that it’s something that happens to human souls when they’re injured. “

He sighs. “’s a little more complicated than that. you know how uh. love, hope, compassion? ‘s part a my body. it’s a…substance.”

You know you and him don’t necessarily use that word the same way, but you incline your head hesitantly.

“determination’s somethin’ _human_ souls make. al knows how to take it out, make it...” he sighs. “remember when i gave the stuff to frisk? when we fought.”

“Yeah,” you say roughly, then clear your throat. gyftmas. “I remember.”

He tilts his head up until you can look down into his face, and an index phalanx rasps evocatively along the groove under his left socket. “that’s what that was.”

The shocking red substance that had flowed from his sockets then; something that he’d...sucked out of Frisk’s...face? Something like that. Whatever. It had been scary as hell.

“But...” you protest faintly. “Isn’t it toxic to monsters? That’s what made Endogeny and them, and...”

“flowey,” Sans confirms. “when i do that, i’m not absorbing it.” He glances down, then back at you. “s’like...the stuff. jus’ take it in, change it into something else so it can come back out,” he finishes, shaky phalanges clicking over his closed socket rapidly.

He looks at you while you think about that.

“Does that mean...if Endogeny’s ready to move on...”

He nods his head slowly. “snowy’s mom already asked me, few years back. she got real tired.” He looks tired, too. Tired to the bone. “but endogeny’s jus’ as happy to stay with their family, keep an eye. they like that mk stays with em, goes around to grillby’s ta see everyone, get pet.” His smile starts weak, but strengthens after a minute. “even alphie has to admit it’s not all bad when she comes and sees them farting around with the regulars at my shows.” His face slowly drains of expression. “few other things…uh. memories, like flowey. those came back too, still dunno how or where they came from.” he sighs. “those went first. the, uh. memoryheads.”

“Sans,” you say, suddenly realizing something. “Couldn’t you have just killed Flowey like he wanted that whole time?”

His face twists enigmatically. “nah. not like he wanted.”

He makes his throat-clearing noise.

“alphie used my scans an’ something i found in the machine to make another machine able to do what i do. isolate and, uh. extract determination.”

He’s quiet for a few minutes, then his dry little whisper starts up again, slides into your ears underneath the sound of everyone else getting everything ready.

“we had a bunch a stuff like that, did other things. in the hole, ‘fore i uh. cleared it out,” he whispers tightly. “real long time ago.” His voice goes thick and sad, and you let him hide his face in your armpit. “put it someplace else, but it still worked. still does. measures how time goes, what it’s doing even if no one can remember it… but it needs me to work.”

He sounds unnerved.

“Like… your body or something?” you say in a weird, high-pitched voice

He shakes his head against you. “needs me to see it, read what it says. thought i musta _made_ it somehow, for a long time,” he says. Makes his dry little sob, gets quiet for a few minutes.

“reason flowey could mess with time’s cause chara’s soul turned to dust, the flower ate it, and alphie woke it up with determination,” he says, just as quiet but calmer, eyes watching Toriel laugh with Angie, dip down for a little kiss. Nattie’s at the end of the table making their own flower arrangements, but...oh. They’re painting the flowers, apparently.

“thing is, ‘m pretty sure he knew about it.” Oh. He doesn’t mean flowey anymore. He means his not-brother. “knew it was gonna happen...wanted to keep everything the way it was.” he exhales. “reason i kept checkin all that, told alphie how to use it and taught her how to read what it said,” and oh shit, now you know why Alphys knows WingDings, “s’cause it helped figure out how to keep the whole thing from collapsing,” he sighs. “then once weird shit started to go off in the reports… i knew it was time,” he says in a weird, shaky voice. “time to… do something.”

“first time i saw frisk, i knew it wasn’t the first time they saw me. but i made a promise to toriel through the door that i wouldn't do what asgore wanted. those other kids….that was all before my time.” He peeks up at you, you give him a weird frown, and he shakes his head again. “more time there was...the more time there was, remember? wasn’t as long in the beginning.” He exhales slowly.

“i still don’t know why i ever killed frisk,” he says, voice flat again. “no one could, not by then. not with how much time there was jus’ layin around waiting to get snapped up, brought together until it all jus’...” He makes a weird gesture you don’t really understand, but you probably wouldn’t understand the explanation either.

“he made you believe a lot of things in ways he shouldn’t...have been able to.”

That’s all you say, since it’s not yours to tell.

Sans just looks at you.

“I still don’t get it,” you admit quietly.

He exhales slow. “wonder if maybe i was suppose to _catch_ frisk somehow,” he croaks quietly. “why else have that stuff about determination in the machine? the blueprints? maybe i was supposed to-”

“I don’t know if that matters, Sans,” you interrupt.

Whatever this line of thought it, it probably doesn’t go anywhere good. You’re realizing he doesn’t really know, but he’s doing his thing he does. Chasing weird thoughts around in circles, none of them connecting the way they should. Everything just sort of falling all over itself, ideas pushing forward and retreating, not really coming to any conclusions. You don’t know what determination could have to do with Gaster, or why Sans seems to think he got what he wanted.

“You exist now,” you say, give him a little squeeze. “I’m glad you do.”

Sans has a tendency to believe whatever will hurt him the most.

Too smart for his own good.

“mmm….guess i am too. i hope all those other sanses out there get somethin like what i got.”

The other thing he talks about when he gets like this. All the other hims, in the other timelines.

“just be able ta live out their lives, maybe even die at some point. heh. really wish em the best, to be honest.”

He has a really weird look on his face.

“never felt like that before. kinda hated em….before. maybe that’s why i put all that weird shit in the machine.” He means the Sans who decided to put a portion of his brother’s dust in there, whatever worse things he’s found that he doesn’t tell you about. As if Sans needs any help realizing bad things can happen. Still, you can definitely imagine a version of Sans that would do something like that, and he’s not even all that different than the one in your arms right now.

“Maybe you should put something good in there instead,” you say.

He smiles, bewildered.

“what could i put in there? can’t think of anything.”

“You could ask around.”

Looks like the mood’s passing. You see something occur to him.

“oh. paps wants you to help him do something important before the uh. rest of all of it.”

You frown down at him.

“When?”

Sans smiles. “dunno. while ago, i guess.”

You sigh heavily, and let him help you up. He plops back on the pile facedown, and you shuffle off to go find the bride.

 

***

 

Papyrus sits with his knees together and his ankles splayed coquettishly, wearing an astoundingly fluffy and needlessly complicated set of white...lingerie, you decide. That’s not the surprising part. The surprising part is the fact that he’s not wearing his usual undergarments underneath it; no gloves or a scarf, either. His long, white bones are on display in a way you haven’t seen since...huh. Since you did the portrait he commissioned, you suppose.

In front of him is a mirrored vanity made of expertly painted cardboard; you can see the meticulously cut curlicues and curves around the polished-foil mirror inlay. The way the drawers open and close is downright ingenious. He gestures you into a padded, non-cardboard chair near the vanity and graciously accepts your tithe of flowery compliments: the way the thin ribbons drape from their nests of ruffly white tulle, his becoming flush of excitement, the unbearably baroque craftskeletonship of the vanity.

He blushes and giggles, then pretends to pour you a cup of tea from the papier-mâché tea set he made to match the vanity, his underwear, and the drapery of the pavilion he’s erected here to get ready in. There’s a matching one at the other end of the grounds, where Mettaton’s getting ready with his own cadre of attendants, visitors, and admirers. Well. You suppose you don’t necessarily count as a cadre, but you’re still glad to be here.

“I get if it isn’t a good time, but I...wanted to thank you,” you say quietly, then pretend to sip invisible tea out of your hand-painted pink and white papier-mâché cup.

“IT’S ALWAYS A GOOD TIME TO THANK ME,” Papyrus points out reasonably enough. “I....” His grin broadens, and his sockets tilt in confusion. “WHAT FOR?”

You sigh, give him a weak smile. “For volunteering to talk to Toriel.”

Papyrus sockets angle away, and he sighs, grin sliding askew. “…NNNYES.”

After Frisk’s return to relative health, you’d talked with them and Sans briefly about a few things, one of them being the necessity of explaining the whole thing to Toriel. After being pathologically secretive for so long, neither of them knew how to even begin to explain something like that to her, but mostly they were just both too afraid. At the same time they both agreed that the only way to truly repair their relationships with her (it kind of impressed you either had been willing to admit they’d damaged it in the first place), they seemed to think that _you_ should be the one to tell her.

Ha ha, yeah…fuck no.

You’d adamantly refused for several reasons you felt should be quite obvious, but Papyrus had joined you all halfway through and suddenly, quietly volunteered.

He’s certainly braver than Frisk or his brother, so you suppose that must have been the reason.

“Um,” you say faintly before you know what’s coming after it, since you apparently are bumming him out. “I, um. Sans said you wanted my help with something?”

And for some reason that seems to make him even more uncomfortable? Wow, you’re just hitting it out of the park today. You wonder if monster weddings are just as fraught with needless drama as human weddings (just like their holidays), or if that’s only the case when the likes of Mettaton and Papyrus are the ones getting married.

“WELL, WE DID DECIDE ON A _HUMAN_ STYLE WEDDING BUT… I WAS. WONDERING??” He smiles nervously. “I WANTED TO INCLUDE A DOG TRADITION.”

You frown. “I thought you said the collars were tacky.”

He frowns harder. “WELL…THEY ARE, ALTHOUGH WHAT I _SAID_ WAS THAT THEY WERE ITCHY. EVEN THE FLEA COLLARS, WHICH IS REMARKABLY IRONIC AND…I DON’T MEAN THAT ONE,” he says, the nervous expression falling back over his creamy-white, organic features. You wait, but he just looks at the wall and fiddles with the ruffles on his garter belt.

“What tradition were you thinking of, Papyrus?” You prompt gently, and he jumps a bit. You glance down at his fidgety, ungloved hands. “Do you want to sign?”

Papyrus gives an annoyed wiggle. “IT’S A CRUTCH,” he gripes, rubbing his humerus.

“Papyrus, crutches are used by people who have broken legs to help them get around,” you inform him bluntly. “If you find yourself using one, odds are you need it. So why don’t you just go ahead?”

He looks vaguely miserable, but seems bent on whatever this is going to be.

“I was hoping you might look at my soul,” he gestures at the wall. “The purpose of the tradition is to confirm your intent in front of a witness, but...”

He finally looks over at where you gape at him in shock.

“NYEH HEH...HEH…” he giggles weakly. Yeesh. There’s a light sheen of magic beading up on his frontal bone.

“Um,” you prevaricate faintly. “Thing One, um…I thought you don’t...do that sort of...thing?”

He turns even more orangey-pink, doesn’t say anything.

“Thing Two… I can’t _see_ souls, Papyrus.”

He gives you a baffled look, then it clears.

“I HAVE...PROVISIONED FOR THAT?” He informs you hesitantly. A finger twitches towards a clear glass container on the vanity, which has an oddly...familiar… You glance at the bottle, then at his damp forehead. Oh, okay. Now it’s your turn to blush. And…

“Is that a _perfume_ bottle?” you whisper-giggle.

“WHAT? IT’S _CLASSY_.”

You give him an expression. It’s usually an effective one, and this is no exception. The tense expression melts and is replaced by a heartrendingly vulnerable one. He looks back at the wall, like he’s trying to figure out how to put something.

“Will you check to see if it’s safe for me to look?” he gestures eventually, and your heart shrivels like a raisin. You take in the conversation, his expression, and the fact that you know him.

You _know_ him.

He’s never looked before.

“Yeah,” you answer quietly aloud. “Yeah, I can do that.”

The interior of this little pavilion isn’t bright despite the white gauze drapery that encloses it; there are so many layers you feel like you’re baked into a cake or something. It certainly dims both sound and light from outside, and there’s something very cozy and...private...about it.He hands you the bottle without looking at you or it; you dutifully spray your eyes with his magic and blink rapidly. This is...

(you decide to think about this part later.)

You’re only a few feet away from Papyrus, and you’re not really sure where to look now as he closes his eyes and touches hesitant fingertips to his chest above the top portion (brassiere? Bustier? Hard to tell under all that tulle, but it doesn’t matter) of his lingerie. He doesn’t rub or search, he doesn’t linger sensually or anything like that. He just looks like he’s thinking, or maybe even asleep. He’s very, very still.

Then his phalanges draw back from his sternum, and...oh.

There he is.

You smile, because you know him.

“Hey,” you say softly. “Long time no see.”

He quibbles; you didn’t ever _see_ him. The table was in the way for a reason. And he really thinks that in the grand scheme of things, it hasn’t been all that long. Barely a moment ago, if that. A soft bloom of shyness. Well, he knows humans aren’t exactly in tune with the long haul, but...erm. eh. He knows that you meant by it.

“I know you do,” you reassure him quietly.

Papyrus is crying; his dry little sob tugs at some buried hook in your heart.

“Is it (SOUL) terrible(personal preference)? Am, am I…(incomplete incomplete inco-)”

“He doesn’t want to hurt you,” you say even softer. “He is you.”

“Keeping secrets is bad(harm/guilt),” Papyrus says in harshly dissonant tones. “I made him(self) do something bad(harm/self/self), so, so that _I_ didn’t have to-”

“He _knows_ , Papyrus. He _is_ you.”

He makes a short, choked noise.

“I’M SORRY,” he says. You don’t know who he’s talking to, or what he’s sorry for. Papyrus lets out one last shaky breath and finally opens his sockets.

“...Oh (recognition),” he says softly.

They look at each other quietly for a few minutes.

“I…IT HAS COME TO MY UNDERSTANDING THAT YOU HAVE RECENTLY LEARNED TO WALK, AND ON VERY SHORT NOTICE,” Papyrus says, slow and careful. “I WOULD LIKE YOU TO KNOW THAT I AM…VERY PROUD OF YOU.

He appreciates that. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s never too late to get some recognition for one’s achievements.

Papyrus’s face sags with grief.

“I couldn’t save him (brother),” Papyrus tells himself. “But you did (house/assistance/forgetting).”

Papyrus shakes his tiny head. He’s got it all backwards. He couldn’t save him...but Papyrus did. After all, he’s the one who showed his brother that it’s never too late for justice.

“I’m sorry (forgetting),” Papyrus crackle-hisses. “I didn’t mean (regret) to leave you responsible for it ( ~~REDACTED~~ ).”

Why does Papyrus think that?

“What…?(incomplete incompl-)”

Papyrus _isn’t_ responsible for it, and he incidentally also forgot. Because they’re the same person. Papyrus gapes at himself, then narrows his sockets in confusion.

“Why do you look like that (child)? Why didn’t you grow up (SOUL)? I _tried_ to-”

Papyrus laughs at himself. He already did. He’s been grown up for a long, _long_ time. He’s doing the symbolism thing where you have an inner child, remember? The child version of yourself appears, and you’re supposed to have all those sentimental revelations. Maybe go to a diner, share a milkshake, and fly some kites together or something. It’s all very touching.

“WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?” Papyrus says in English.

Because he’s awesome?

“THAT’S TRUE,” he sighs, capitulating immediately.

Papyrus gets a little more serious after that.

They both know why Papyrus has been putting this off. He has a lot of things to say he doesn’t really want to hear, but he needs to anyways. If he’d ever bothered to listen to his hands he’d be better prepared, but...it is what it is, and now’s the time.

He reminds Papyrus of when Sans gave him the soul talk, the first time he asked what those people in the room upstairs were doing. All couched carefully in the terms of what other people and various hypothetical someones might do when they “grow up” if they meet certain people, and feel a certain-

“HYPOTHETICALLY-” Papyrus sounds strangled, but Papyrus ignores him.

And Sans had made sure he knew that neither of them were old enough to do things like that yet, even though Sans was-

“I’LL NEVER DO THAT SORT OF THING!” Papyrus hollers, “AND I-”

Papyrus finally lets his frustration boil up to the surface.

He is _literally_ doing exactly that sort of thing right _now_ , for fuck’s sakes.

Papyrus shuts his teeth with a little click and glances up at you.

You lift a hand and give him a little wave.

He gets iridescent and looks back at himself sheepishly.

Sans wasn’t interested at all either, until he was. That’s not a secret, and even if it makes Papyrus uncomfortable for very understandable reasons, he knows Sans did eventually _become_ interested. Just like Sans knows Papyrus _didn’t_ , and isn’t. Doesn’t.

Except.

Papyrus mimes blowing you a lipless little kiss with his soft-mittened hand, then turns around so you can’t see what he’s saying. Papyrus face slowly slides into something uncomfortable as he listens to himself. Then it gets sad, and then-

“I DON’T WANT TO,” he whines, glancing up at you, of all things. “WHAT IF THEY-”

He cuts off, looks back into himself.

He’s very beautiful, like a pale, double-lobed orchid tinged midnight blue at the point currently, a quivering blush of sunset across the hale lobes. He’s strong, not delicate. Papyrus chokes off an involuntary little sound; you avert your eyes before he starts to _feel_ your gaze more than perhaps he might want, and look at his face instead.

He looks like he really doesn’t like what he’s hearing.

Your stomach does a little flip, because you know the kind of things Papyrus had to hear, even though he didn’t want to. Didn’t want to see them, either.

Then Papyrus puts himself back, and you give him a minute of not seeing or hearing that comes from a much better place.

Eventually, he starts to speak.

“SO...AFTER SANS, SANS TOLD ME ABOUT...” His voice wiggles away from him somehow. “HOW HE CAN’T HAVE CHILDREN,” and the other thing he did and didn’t say, “AND I, I ASKED...”

He trails off, maybe decides to say something else instead.

“IASKED ALPHYS TO CHECK FOR ME,” Papyrus says. “I CAN’T HAVE CHILDREN EITHER. SHE STILL DOESN’T KNOW WHY, BUT...” he sighs. “SHE THINKS THE CAUSE IS, UH…. MAYBE? INHERITED. ALONG WITH SOME OTHER THINGS I ALSO.”

He looks incredibly unhappy.

And very adamant about something. Almost...determined. It leaves a cold taste in your mouth.

“Inherited( ~~REDACTED~~ ). Such as this manner (precise; unobscured) of speaking.”

The expression increases.

“AND… BEING VERY…”

A silent sob wracks him, he’s fighting something. “BEING VERY...” You don’t know if he’s winning or losing; you don’t know which either of you hope will happen.

“being very… convincing (FONT subsection: understanding; subsection: influence; subsection: understanding[OVERRIDE/COMMAND]).” 

It hangs in the air heavy and tempting, a promise like a poisoned apple.

**(FONT; subsection: understanding; subsection: influence; subsection: understanding[OVERRIDE/COMMAND]).**

“I can’t argue with that,” you whisper. You already know, and your heart hurts anyways.

He nods miserably. 

Even Papyrus himself hadn’t understood _exactly_ how well Gaster had been able to hide what he was doing until later, but when any excuse has a fair chance of being good enough anyways, a well-constructed argument with the weight of an intellect to rival Sans’s behind it might as well be mind control.

The two brutalized children Sans and Papyrus had begun life as had had even fewer options than most. You think of how many times you’ve had to tell Sans his abuser was able to convince him of untrue things in ways that shouldn’t have been possible, and you wonder if he’s ever managed to believe you.

There are a lot of things Papyrus and his brother don’t talk about.

They’re being careful.

“MINE IS...NOT AS STRONG,” Papyrus says, considering his words carefully. You’re realizing he always does, and for just how good a reason. “But because my body is more continuous(SOUL) than most, I cannot speak without it happening to some degree (FONT→influence), and touching (physical) reinforces it.”

He looks at the floor.

“I do not want (rejection: aspect) to be **understood** (INTEGRITY: override FONT subsection: understanding(etc)→ influence [NULL]).” The dissonance of the tones is especially hissing.

He sits tensely, waiting for your judgment.

“That must be really scary,” you say softly. His sockets stay where they are but he nods, magic welling up in the corners of his sockets.

Papyrus could probably have as many friends as he wanted. He could have a lot of things. Instead he lets just enough of what he’s capable of show to put people off. He goes off by himself regularly, makes sure he isn’t...influencing anyone. Just in case. He’s as honest as he can be all the time, bosses people around harmlessly, makes ridiculous suggestions and requests so they can get lots of practice telling him ‘no’.

Every time Sans ignores his brother’s requests, complaints, and demands, it’s a confirmation that their relationship is the way they make it, the way they decide that it is.

Not what it was intended to be.

You still don’t know how skeletons are...made...or born, or however they come into existence. If Papyrus isn’t able to have children in the usual way either, it supports one of your theories which was that Sans and Papyrus had been made with part of Gaster’s...um. Not ‘genetic material’ since their bodies are made of magic, but something like that. Physical material, maybe.

Children not made in the usual way, but related just as closely.

It’s why they were technically his brothers instead of his sons. They can’t have children either, because they both inherited whatever made _him_ unable to do so.

Papyrus has either won or lost. He is very, very still.

“He made _me_ like this,” Papyrus...whispers.

He _whispers_ , stares utterly expressionless into the middle distance. You try to figure out what language he’s speaking and can’t. You didn’t know Papyrus could talk without moving his mouth too, but it makes sense that he can.

“ _Not_ Sans. He put something in there to make _me_ like this, so I came out wrong.” He doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe. “That’s why the Sans I do not remember accused him of doing that. He knew because he witnessed him do it to _me_. Sans’s condition could not be replicated; it was an accident.”

Doesn’t move.

Doesn’t breathe.

Invisible.

“Mine… is not.”

Papyrus breaks his silence safely; you already know (didn’t know). Someone with Gaster’s ability to be understood exactly how he _wanted_ to be understood (and smart enough to invent time travel) could probably get away with just about anything. He’d manipulated Papyrus’s gestation, whatever form it had taken, and crafted what he believed would be the perfect accomplice.

You’re pretty sure Sans and Papyrus both inherited one trait from their unmourned, much-older brother. You know which they are because you saw his soul in Papyrus’s memory with his eyes, even though Papyrus himself doesn’t remember. Doesn't let himself, most of the time.

Integrity and patience.

Two things you wouldn’t imagine could shape an abomination of a person like Gaster, and one of them had been passed by necessity on to Papyrus. Integrity had been combined with Bravery; traits chosen in order to maximize his capacity for violence.

Endless, sourceless fear to catalyze into anger, kinetic learning and poor vision to lower his temper’s breaking point, large stature and uppercase voice to intimidate and coerce. Energy so boundless it would prompt action in the absence of other cues.

Bravery to act without thinking.

Integrity to convince himself whatever he had done was _right_ , no matter how terrible it was.

 

You gaze with a certain tenderness into the devastated face of the grown child who had been born for the express purpose of becoming his disabled brother’s second rapist.

 

Gaster couldn’t replicate Sans’s condition, but he _could_ order a second child made to double Sans’s… productivity. He could make him less intelligent, physically powerful, constantly afraid, sow the seeds of an overweening and brittle ego to make him easy to manipulate through praise or disapproval.

He never considered that his brothers would also be each _others_ ’ brother, far more than they _ever_ were his.

He didn’t realize giving Sans someone to love and protect would provide him a source of motivation so infinite it could inspire him to _protect himself_ , that it could keep him alive despite the relentless pressure of time, memory, and suffering; that his duty to Papyrus would override his self-destruction every time so he could keep his promise.

Gaster never imagined that giving Papyrus a role model like Sans to love and admire, to _emulate_ , someone to make proud that wasn’t Gaster, would teach him to use the toxic giftbasket of self he was given and transform it into something that would save them both.

Integrity means ‘all-of-a-piece’…

But it also means to have _very_ high standards.

Gaster’s fatal mistake: forgetting children are _people_ who could find solace and strength in each other, rather than programmable _things_ that belonged to him.

When Papyrus holds out his arms to you tremulously, you approach him and take him into your embrace. He shudders out a strange, rough caw when your soft cheek brushes the top of his skull. He hides his face in your already-wrinkled shirt, and his gloved hands fist into the fabric.

“I do not want(shame/fear) to be _**known**_ (SOUL).” The crackling hiss pierces your shirt, tepid with fear.

You _know_ what he is, and he knows you do.

You felt it when you touched him; you know _him_. There it is: the double ended needle buried under soft yarnball layers of everything _else_ Papyrus is, the sick-knotted, wounded/ing core he could never untangle, the part of himself he could never quite manage to fix. The dark, murky feelings mercilessly adhered to every facet of sexual arousal he’s capable of experiencing: the thrill of violence, the desire to cause pain. The visceral hunger to force and demand, to degrade and dominate.

He hates it ( _he wants it_ ).

Mettaton is a _very_ good actor.

The best there is.

He’s safe to touch and be touched by, and Papyrus has no way to know for sure it doesn’t hurt the way Mettaton pretends it does. The way he does too, sometimes. Steel robots and tall skeletons can take a great deal of rough treatment without taking a single point of actual damage, after all. Any pain Mettaton feels is optional and voluntary. If he was ever damaged he can just be repaired, and the body _inside_ his body can’t _be_ damaged. Not that Papyrus has ever done anything to cause either, of course. No one has the kind of control over movement and magic that Papyrus does; they’ve had years of dancing without a single missed step.

The fact that some of those dances happen without an audience is okay, because they’re _rehearsing_. Actors are allowed to rehearse, to perfect their craft. And sometimes the most challenging scenes are the ones that need the most practice.

It’s okay to do those things to each other if they’re not really “Papyrus” and “Mettaton”; they’re _other_ people, having other feelings.

Feelings _Papyrus_ would never have. It’s a game; a game of pretending not to want things. One of them pretending he doesn’t like it ( _he wants it_ ), and then it happens anyway. He doesn’t want it ( ~~ _he wants it_~~ _)_ and it _makes him feel_ … ( ~~no no no~~ ) but it’s...

it’s not...

it’s not _him_ , though.

These are the lies he tells himself to justify what he wants.

The things he likes are _gross_.

He’s _gross_.

Papyrus buries his face in your shirt and weeps raw and hopeless with shame-sickness, with self-loathing. He’s broken; he’s _bad-wrong-disgusting_ , he’s a ruined-rotten fox corpse reeking in the underbrush that no one should _ever_ , they _shouldn’t_ -

Your fingers stroke bare bone.

You give Papyrus something threefold, something priceless.

The truth you and your mother shared: no one asks to be born, and no one is responsible for _why_ they were born.

The truth you and Sans shared: Papyrus unraveled part of his mind and soul, but his body still remembers something it was forced to feel.

The truth you and Papyrus shared: He’d been forced to feel things just as much as his brother had; they’re just different things. Or maybe the same thing for different reasons. The “value” of repetition.

Papyrus cries harder. He’s drawn to pain, and so he tries to _heal_ it. He’s a fixer of broken things, the one who puts the pieces back where they go. So why does he _want_ to break them? Why is he _like_ this? It’s...it’s bad. He’s so _bad_ , and if anyone saw, if anyone _knew_ …

_You_ know. You smile and pet his skull with your cheek soothingly. You _can_ argue with him, because you can’t be argued with either.

You touched his soul; you can’t not know that he likes it when Mettaton pretends to do things to his body he pretends he doesn’t want, too. They play very, _very_ complicated games with lots and lots of rules; the rules are there to protect them, keep them safe inside themselves while they challenge and reward each other. It’s okay to like those kind of games as long as you follow the rules, take good care of yourself and anyone else who likes to play them with you.

Papyrus shakes and resists, because he knows how lies born of integrity work. He wants to believe you so badly, every bone in his body quivers with it.

“There are other ways of getting to know someone,” you whisper soft and slow. You keep contact, you let him feel the softness of truth in your words instead of the strength of your conviction. “He _knows_ you, Papyrus. He just did it the slow way, the old-fashioned way. Because _you’re worth it_ , and because he wanted to know you so much.”

You love his dry skeleton noises. The way you touch him is intimate, but it isn’t sexual. He doesn’t know how to feel this, but it doesn’t… it doesn’t scare him. It’s okay. It’s whatever you decide it is, and you don’t have to name it anything.

“He wants to help you feel how you want to feel,” you continue, thinking and feeling. “Do you know why?”

This is wrapped up tight in layers and layers of cotton, too.

“Maybe you should look.”

After a long time, he does.

Papyrus helps Mettaton feel the way he wants to feel. That’s why the games are so fun, and Papyrus _wouldn’t_ like them if Mettaton didn’t, too. It’s why Mettaton follows all the rules: he likes the strictness and structure, he likes the scripts and pageantry, the excitement and challenge…. he likes the way Papyrus… _is_.

He likes how he is, and he likes what they do together. He _loves_ him.

And it might be okay to feel like that with someone who loves him, with someone he loves, too. They can follow the rules and keep each other safe. They can play with just bodies, they don’t have to do anything more...ever.

And that’s the core of the games they play once everything else falls away. Every single moment is scripted, and that structure makes it absolute: nothing will ever, _ever_ happen that they don’t both _want_. The way they play makes it so much _less_ likely that an accident can happen, that either of them will ever feel scared or get hurt. Which is part of why they hardly ever veer from the script.

That’s not to say they don’t both thrive off challenges, and see how far they can take themselves. It’s why there’s a script _for_ going off-script sometimes. Why there’s space written in for ad libs, _always_. A time and a place, enough space for everything. As much time and space as Papyrus and Mettaton need to talk and take care of each other, to touch and be touched, to be hurt and comforted.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel safe. To be protected and cared for, even when you’re vulnerable. When you need to fight and yell and scream, to feel exactly as afraid as you really are with someone who can take it, to feel catharsis and be praised for your bravery.

Time alone cannot change us from being children who were hurt very badly.

Papyrus has spent every bit of the time he’s been given trying to do better, to be better than the reason he was born.

Papyrus finally stops weeping, shudders out the last of his stomachless nausea because he can’t deny it anymore. He is the way he is, and Mettaton’s allowed to love him for it.

When you finally draw back, you notice the entire front of your fancy wedding outfit’s drenched with his emotionally volatile shed magic. You shrug, smile at him.

His face is still blank with emotion, but as his sockets fade back to calm-even blackness you have a feeling….yep.

“I MADE YOU AN OUTFIT,” he caws softly. “IT’S…IN THE CLOSET.”

There’s a cardboard wardrobe that matches the vanity half-hidden behind a swath of drapery. You go and look.

“Wowie,” you say quietly, and Papyrus sniffles dryly through his ancient, innocent grin.

 

***

 

_Siempre estoy soñando en ti_   
_Besando mis labios, acariciando mi piel…_   
_Abrazándome con ansias locas_   
_Imaginando que me amas_   
_Como yo podia amar a ti…_

The bottom of the emptied Olympic size swimming pool is certainly a hot spot of the reception, considering this is where the bar is. Fuku and Grillby serve a limited menu of drinks side by side; Papyrus isn’t as popular as Sans, but both see plenty of glasses anyhow. Heats Flamesman even makes an appearance, and he and Sans spend a while in the corner of the pool doing what you’re 80% sure is some kind of gambling. Or maybe Tarot? There are cards involved and an exchange of money at the end, then Sans shortcuts Heats back to wherever he usually spends his time.

Frisk has decided to cosplay Papyrus meeting Mettaton for the first time once again, the same outfit you remember from ARTBALL with the cat ears and blue skirt, with the tuxedo-print t-shirt. You invite them to dance, since the outfit Papyrus had made for you is a replica of Mettaton’s expensive-looking, tailored tuxedo from the same meeting, sewn to your body’s specifications instead.

_I could lose my heart tonight_  
 _If you don't turn and walk away_  
 _'Cause the way I feel I might_  
 _Lose control and let you stay…_

At some point Frisk had started letting Sans cut their hair. It’s kind of a big deal, although there’s no appreciable increase in skill or quality. It might be a little _more_ chewed-off-looking, actually, but it’s still beautiful to you. Sometimes you see Frisk looking at Sans or Toriel, visibly realizing something you’d had to learn too early on in your life. That your parents aren’t gods; they’re just people who have no idea what the fuck is going on or what they’re supposed to do about it, just like you.

That’s the thing about being young, no matter how long you stay young for. Physical bodies shape your thinking, and human souls are housed in bodies that determine their limits. You can’t know until you know, and there are some things no one can really tell you. Things you can only hear once you’re ready for them. 

_I can only wonder how_   
_Touching you would make me feel_   
_But if I take that chance right now_   
_Tomorrow will you want me still?_

Asgore’s here, and Sans has mostly managed to behave. Well, other than the fact that Sans has managed to spill something on him at least three times so far, necessitating a change of outfit each time until Asgore decided to make himself scarce whenever Sans gets within five feet of him.

In fact, right while you’re watching you see Asgore trip over something invisible, spilling his own glass of Sans all over his white, ruffled shirt. He grins at Undyne sheepishly, mouths something banal and goes off in search of yet another shirt.

Oh, well. 

_So I should keep this to myself  
And never let you know…_

_I could fall in love with you…_

Papyrus and Mettaton are on display in the elevated lifeguard stations at either end of the pool, the long trains of their gowns dipping splayed into the pool itself to show their designs like tapestries. Mettaton’s has a white-on-white texture portrait of his own box form holding a microphone and waving studded into it with swarovski crystals; Papyrus’s has a raised design of his own face done in rows of ruffles made to look like bones close-up. It’s excruciatingly clever. The world’s most married to a robot skeleton’s got his phone out and wears the narrow-socketed frown he gets when he’s arguing with someone on the Undernet. You’re not surprised, considering this is the longest he’s had to sit still since the festivities began.

Eventually the music changes to an instrumental competition theme and the dance floor is cleared for the living chess game; you and Sans take your places on the cloth ground-cover chessboard rolled out by humans hired and paid profusely for the privilege. You’re both on Papyrus’s side, and had insisted on being within the first five eliminations. The promise is kept, and you grin as he joins you where you’ve already reclined on the pile of cushions near Fuku’s lambent green form. You hope someday to meet her child, but apparently they’re already in their restless phase, and meeting flammable people at that time in their life is a dicey prospect at best.

Grillby had confessed to you earlier he’d been a little disappointed that there hadn’t been time to fireproof the board; Fuku had admitted she’s just as glad to sit this one out, serving drinks to the pieces (wedding guests) captured by Mettaton at her assigned end of the pool. She’d also told you all about how she’s started working on a Mettaton beverage, and you’d laughed for like ten minutes straight when she’d ingenuously informed you that she hopes you’re still alive to try it once it’s ready. Yeah, it’s no surprise that this is the person who invented the Papyrus monster alcohol.

Once Papyrus reaches the point of no return in his rousing and inevitable defeat of Mettaton at the actual chess part, the robot decides to break all the rules (there are none) and lead a squadron of Papyrus’s former pieces down into the pool itself, armed with something that looks like a cross between fencing foils and giant cotton swabs. Papyrus gives a short, rousing speech before leading his own army down into the fray; all suffer suitably operatic demises in various combinations and forms they’d all had to meticulously memorize; you and Sans had gotten special dispensations to excuse you from this part due to “age and infirmity (LAZINESS)”. The handwritten excuses are safety-pinned your your shirts; Undyne’s calligraphy is energetically splattery but mostly legible.

You both stay up to watch this part, since you’d decided to sleep through the swordfight during the ceremony itself to avoid being conscripted as extras, as well as the teaser trailer for _Papyrus and Mettaton’s Epic Divorce_ , scheduled to occur in one year’s time. Not only that, you already agreed to participate in the magic show to be chainsawed in half later, so you don’t even feel bad. Nothing wrong with getting your naps in while you can, considering there’s two more days of wedding to get through.

The climax is pretty breathtaking, especially the firehose-like spurts of fake blood staining the huge white gowns Papyrus and Mettaton are still wearing as they take about forty five minutes to hack and stab each other to death romantically, professing their undying devotion to the glorious Cause that tore them apart. You glance at Sans in what you think is a subtle way; he just shakes his head with a mellow grin that would have fooled you completely even six months ago.

“s’jus’ strawberry syrup,” he says quietly. “…heh. not like i gotta do their laundry.”

“I’m getting a little tired,” you reply blandly, and he exhales in wry amusement. “Want to head back to the nest?”

Smooth bone fingers seek yours, give a little squeeze.

“k.”

You and Sans groan up from the pile of cushions stationed near the Fuku end of the pool and head back to the pile of cushions under the fairy-light strung canopy near the gazebo. (Or rather, Sans walks you behind a life-size cardboard cutout of Papyrus with bulging muscles riding a horse wearing sunglasses, and shortcuts you behind one of the gauzy draperies around the corners of the canopy.)

Nattie’s painted flowers are looking garishly appropriate as centerpieces for the trestle tables with various hors d'oeuvres, a station where you can make your own stuffed toys, a table lined with free blacksmith puzzles designed by the bride that no one has ever solved, a punch bowl filled with Grillby’s experimental wobbly squares that you hope are gelatin, and a final table filled with funeral objects. You’ve been avoiding that last since the bowl of Sans’s friend’s dust (baked into crackers by Muffet) is on there, and you’re not super in the mood for a slightly stale death snack at the moment.

Sans seems like he’s in better spirits than earlier (spending time with Grillby’s kids always cheers him up, or at least makes him seem more grounded), but he’s still kind of quiet and stare-y.

You touch his shoulder, and he glances over at you with a tiny, expectant quirk to the flat ridge over his teeth.

“Do you want to skip out for a little while and do some stargazing?” you ask. “We could bring some of that,” you add, indicate the pile of cushions and whatnot.

His expression melts. “yeah. we could do that for a lil bit.” He smiles tremulously. “wanna go to our spot?”

“Sure,” you agree, then help him put a few of the cushions into his phone. It’s still a special occasion, so there’s no reason not to bring wedding cushions instead of the ones you always use.

When you get there, you remind Sans you need a minute for your eyes to get used to the lack of light, but he goes ahead and starts pulling the cushions back out of his phone by himself. By the time you can move around without falling on your face, he’s got your nest all fluffed up on the little cliff by the sea. It’s quiet except for the surf and the wind, dark except for the stars. The moon must’ve already set a while ago.

Sans settles into your arms with a huffed little sigh. You’re already dozing off when he starts rambling again.

“was saying earlier, don’t know what i am. maybe it’s more like...dunno what i’m supposed to do?”

You taste cold. Since when has _Sans_ ever worried about his purpose in life?

“Sans…” you trail off, frowning up at the icy winking points spattered across the night. “I’m worried. This doesn’t really sound like you.”

“jus’ feel scared,” he whispers, shivering in the damp-tepid summer night wind. It smells all ocean-y and exciting. “like...what happens next? spent so long just…waiting for everything to end, ‘m not sure what to do now that it didn’t.”

“You’re full of shit, Sans,” you say frankly. “We’ve already been doing it this whole time.”

He snorts bawdily. “i know we been _doing it_ , but-”

“I mean we’ve been doing ‘what happens next’ this whole time,” you clarify before he gets carried away. You actually do want to get a nap in before the magic show. “we didn’t wait for it to _be_ next, we just started doing what we would have done now… then.” You smile, feel a warm glow. “We’re not like Papyrus and Mettaton. We don’t live in those big, flashy moments, spend time rehearsing for the event of...of us to happen. We’re like the present tense of a relationship, you know? We were already having it, no matter what was going on around us, or…” You exhale. It’s hard to explain. “This is our favorite part of the relationship. Just day to day stuff, simple things. Enjoying ourselves. Enjoying each other. We don’t need a bunch of other shit, just me and you. We’re _enough_.”

You hear his breath catch, glance over in surprise.

“yeah,” he whispers, then flops over hard and cuddles into you, squirming in that way that always makes you marvel that he’s made of bones and not like...eels, or something.

“you got no idea how special you are,” he whispers tightly against your hair. “you…i could always tell you never wanted anything but _me_. you never...never ask for anything cept spending time together, don’t care bout telling other people what to do, don’t...” He sighs. “you don’t want power, or money…the way humans want money, i mean. don’t need a buncha people telling you how great you are.”

“Sans...there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting most of those things,” you point out slowly.

He leans back, glances away and then back at you sheepishly. “yeah, but...you really think i’d wanna spend this kinda time with someone who did? how you think that’d turn out? you don’t go around showing off how tight you are with monsters, don’t ask us for anything. when something good happens for you, you wanna share it; you don’t rub it in other people’s faces. you don’t need other people to make you...i don’t know. s’like you got your own compass inside, tells you what to do.”

“Seems like your bar’s kind of on the ground here, Sans,” you say with an incredulous little smirk. You don’t point out that some of his absolute favorite people are the sort that _do_ want those kind of things, since you’re trying to gas him up, not deflate him. You don’t point out that you’re actually just as high strung as those people too, you just don’t _seem_ it as much…you already told him he’s full of shit once tonight, and that’s plenty.

He laughs, shakes his skull at you fondly.

“you never even asked me for a monster phone,” he says, peeking at you sidelong and giggling when you frown openmouthed.

“W...huh?”

“ _monster phone_ ,” he repeats emphatically. “me an al _make em_ , for fuck’s sake. decide who gets em, too, s’long’s tori or buttface agree.” Oh. He means Asgore. “every other human i know’d cut an arm off for one, and here you are...” he’s shaking with mirth, “one person i’d actually give one to…and you don’t give a shit,” he chortles, rasping phalanges over the top of his skull.

“What would I do with a monster phone?” you ask derisively.

He sighs with fondness. “welp. you coulda brought these cushions here y’self, for one thing.”

“Why the fuck would I bring my own cushions when I can make you do it for me?”

He snorts helplessly, buries his face in you.

“love you,” he whispers after a minute. “love you so much.”

“Love you too,” you whisper at the star-spattered sky above Ebott. “Put the blanket on.” He does, and you derive comfort from the fluffy weight of it, even if you don’t need the warmth. You’re already feeling your mind relax, Sans’s bones get loose, and your priceless handmade tuxedo starting to wrinkle.

It feels good.

“can you wake me up in time for the dance part?” he whispers, wiggling into you more. Of all the Papyrus parties he’s been to, that’s the one portion he almost always goes out of his way not to miss. Even when he’s exhausted, upset, or just bored, he loves watching his brother dance with or without Mettaton.

“I can try.” You rub his humerus lightly, loving the way the cloth slides back and forth over smooth, hard bone.

“kay. don’t wanna miss it,” he finishes, and a moment later you hear a snore that takes you to sleep with him.

 


	72. leap year

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tori Amos – Pretty Good Year  
> https://youtu.be/xr8auZq-Xn8
> 
> Here's a drawing of Sans being Reader's Lap Gremlin at Grillby's:   
> https://www.deviantart.com/gildedpleasure/art/Gremlining-805398765

It’s July still, and then it’s suddenly July _again_ instead.

Funny how that works, huh?

The older you get the faster time goes. Nobody really tells you that, and if they do you’re too young to give a shit. Maybe it’s not the sort of thing anyone can _tell_ you.

You just have to feel it.

 

In August Papyrus does a portrait of Mettaton. It’s a clear-blue upright heart shape that scandalizes absolutely everyone for reasons that can be explained by no one.

Mettaton loves it so much he has a limited edition of 7,000 t-shirts made of it; you buy one after haggling the price up to something reasonable and wear it to Grillby’s, enjoying Sans’s just-under-the-surface discomfort. It’s almost as funny as the time you tinted your lips for ARTJOG, and Grillby pays you double for the shirt in turn. You don’t know why he didn’t just buy one from Mettaton; then you _do_ , and you blush so hard you avoid him for a week. After that, you get over it.

Angie has a hard time figuring out that Papyrus and Mettaton’s wedding was really the same as most of the other parties Papyrus throws for various reasons, and it doesn’t mean that they’re moving in together. In fact, he stays home more now than he did in the leadup to the wedding, although their honeymoon lasts a fortnight and no one sees or hears a peep from them for the duration.

 

In September Ange attends your seminar on human-monster communication, once again giving herself not nearly enough credit for cutting through the gordian knot of your academic jargon faultlessly and rephrasing exactly what’s most important so people can actually understand it. You end up taking notes.

Angie’s nonplussed loneliness as a result of her children enjoying the autonomy Ebott’s structure afford them leaves her at a loss for some time before you suggest that perhaps she make plans with her own children much like she would with other people. She get defensive about it at first, then she and Nattie start having art nights together. As far as you know you sister hasn’t done that regularly since before she got married, but every time you come home and hear the Blookhouse music and smell the Indian food takeout, you know you’ll see them at the dining room table making outlines on their viewers for each other to color in.

Diane tells you over lunch on day she’s been fooling around with Chell from the bursar’s office, and it’s casual in a way she’s never been able to achieve with any human partner. They share a profound sense of separation from others, and indulge in the pleasures of that together. You smile, don’t understand at all, and feel extremely happy for both of them.

You explain what a gordian knot is to Papyrus.

He makes one.

 

 

In October you, Papyrus, and Frisk take the opportunity of a warm spell to hold a strange overnight camping vigil for Flowey. They hold hands and play Selena songs all night. Papyrus sings along; he’s very, very bad at it. Frisk cries even though they can’t hear him; you cry because you can.

All three of you are wearing ornate camping gowns from Papyrus’s macrame Gordian Knot line. It’s a collaboration under the MTT Brand umbrella, one of the flagships of monsterdom’s newest power couple, MettPyrus. When you point out to Papyrus that there are several other more intuitive ways to combine their names, he scoffs and tells you intuition is overrated. You insist that Mett Pyrus sounds like a porn name, then act like you don’t see him sending several frantic messages before turning off his phone again.

The next day as you eat your bowl of Dog Salad, which is the only thing Annoying Dog’s letting hit the plate this time around, you finally work up the courage to ask why you of all people were invited to this...wake, or whatever it is.

You receive the absolutely astounding answer from Frisk: Flowey had apparently adored you. Frisk spends a little while showing you the insults and text-based image caricatures of and about you in their monster phone’s history, and Papyrus invites you to hide plates of spaghetti in trees with him when they make you all choked up.

Not hollow trees.

Just trees.

 

In November you and Sans travel for fun. You spend the vast majority of your time doing the same sort of stuff you do at home, just somewhere else. It’s fucking awesome, but you both miss everyone too much and end up coming back early.

A few days later he takes you down to the tiny, inaccessible pebble beach that’s apparently tucked away somewhere far below the clifftop you usually spend time at, staring out over the ocean while you eat or talk or sleep or just sit quietly.

He gets a blanket out, wraps you both up underneath it and finally confesses to you just how kinky it is for monsters to expose their souls outdoors, making you blush and giggle wickedly at the memory of touching him and fucking him on _top_ of a blanket on the clifftop that one time during the best and most instantaneous summer ever. He makes a bunch of jokes about whole new reasons to get out of bed in the morning, a few more about being ‘touched’ by your concern, and then asks shyly if you want him to return the favor.

You do and he does, straddling you inside the blanket a few feet away from the pounding surf. He’s excited enough by your daring he comes in hot; gives you all the things he loves best about being reckless the way only the most patient of beings can. He pushes fast to leave you panting, then holds you close and lies still while a mobile tendril of his genitalia seeks and penetrates you on its own, pulses inside you slow and relentless. His hot breath puffs raggedly against you while he caresses your face with his nasal bone, wrapped up soft and warm over the cold, hard stones. He strokes your back and tells rambling stories about what all the crabs and minnows in the ocean are doing. Chill droplets of salty damp speckle your exposed neck and brow as he breathlessly explains the ways all their little legs weave together like lace and bones. He describes chitinous wreaths and slick-braided bodies, nipping at your shoulder and neck all the while. He asks you to dig your nails into his ribs until he grunts and shivers; he weeps and calls you his sweet little snail when you come.

You manage to get an arm free of his entangling bone limbs, reach down with fingers to push your body inside his too; he lets you hold his vertebrae in your teeth and muffle your cries in unyielding bone as you pulse around each other. You disengage further to huddle between his femurs and ply his soft opening with your tongue, letting the delicate tendril twine your fingers in curious, quivery bliss as you caress it gently with your thumb. You wriggle back up to kiss his face, then turns your back and open yourself for him again. Limbs and bones and blankets and stones tangle tight together; you keep pushing all sorts of body parts inside each other until you’re spent and sleepy, then you let consciousness drift away.

When you wake up the sun’s beating down on the blanket like there’s two of them, making you so overheated you decide to go skinny dipping just in time to greet some very beaten-down looking pirates in a patched motorboat running on ethanol. They’re so nonplussed that they apparently can’t tell your gender despite the fact that you’re completely naked it makes you laugh, and they seem to find it difficult to take a naked, laughing person as a viable threat.

You laugh again when they finally notice Sans. They only speak French, but once they see Sans is a monster, they bring out their children and come build a bonfire on the pebble beach with you. He can communicate with them easily once he obtains permission to do so, and while you don’t speak French it’s close enough to a few languages you’re familiar with that you manage to understand the gist most of the time, even if you can’t really formulate replies.

Sans busts out his sheetmetal grill and roasts ‘dogs and hotcats, lets all ten (after the addition of the two children) stuff themselves on as many as they want. He trades a full bag of priceless monster candy to the pirates, who it turns out are all women. In return he receives a pair of patched brown shorts from the youngest pirate (she’s the same height as him, broad-hipped but emaciated) to replace the ones he’d gotten his shed magic all over earlier.

She ends up lingering near him after the children are put to bed in the boat, and a few of them go off into the ridiculously warm November night to do whatever lady pirates like to do at shore. One or two even leave their rifles by the fire instead of taking them with.

Sans and the youngest pirate talk a little, and you notice the old bruises on her face look darker in firelight. He gives her a bottle from his phone; she goes to sleep and you and Sans decide to go off and do a little of what lady pirates like to do at shore yourselves. You ride his grin thrilled, chilled, and shivering with knees planted on the wadded up blanket, then lick salt-spicy bare bone in the windy dark until low, soft cries echo off the cliff to get swallowed by the ocean.

In the morning the pirates all kiss you goodbye, except the youngest who comes to live in Ebott. Her name is Ester, and she ends up watching children for (and living at) the monster grocery until she isn’t hungry anymore.

 

In December Matt spends gyftmas in Ebott; he sleeps at Grillby’s since he’s not invited anywhere else, and all the hotels are mysteriously booked. He gets in everyone’s way, breaks things by accident and spends so much time apologizing you wish he hadn’t bothered, and generally acts sheepish, baffled, and forced-cheerful by turns in the least helpful possible ways. When he says something to you offhand about how you ‘never gave him a chance’ or something, you laugh in his face and walk away.

He has the usual sort of tantrums people who are used to being allowed to make their own moods into other people’s problems have; no one sticks around for it. Not even his own kids, who have a degree of freedom and safety in Ebott that they might not elsewhere. They can just walk away from him, go to the child center of wherever they are, and call someone else to come get them (or just stay there) if they don’t like what he has to say. He has a very hard time believing there’s nothing he can do about it, but there’s nothing he can do about that, either.

Sans watches Matt’s egregious performance of his own insecurities, and gets the blank look on his face you haven’t seen since he fought with Alphys that one time. When it turned out she hadn’t done the thing he’d thought she had. With Dr Foster and the skeleton abortion goo. That thing. The blank look’s not covering guilt this time so much as embarrassment, you think.

The next time Sans and Asgore end up at the same function, he only gets one thing spilled on him by Sans. Toriel lets you know that’s a record low.

 

In January Sans wakes up in your bed one day, goes downstairs to the kitchen and starts making pies. The kids come down at the boisterous clatter Sans’s cooking always makes. Rubbing their eyes sleepily, the asses the situation and promptly start making pies along with him. They’re asking questions, measuring amounts of things, kneading and beating and mixing and dicing. They’re laughing at his jokes and making their own, pranking him by ‘confusing’ various ingredients for each other, and generally acting half or twice their respective ages. Sans has Nattie up on his hip, staggering under their weight a little as he talks on the phone with his brother for a bit, then with Frisk. He doesn’t stop stirring with one hand while Nattie holds the bowl and his phone for him. An hour later Frisk and Papyrus show up with MK and a laundry basket full of additional ingredients, and just start…helping out.

With the pies.

Frisk shows off their collection of ASL puns to the kids, making them shriek with outrage or laughter (or both) around flaky-gooey mouthfuls of whatever Sans made last. Some of them are savory, some are sweet, some of them have vulgar words, heart shapes, or genitalia shaped or scrawled into the tops. A few of them are absolutely perfect in every way, buttery-spicy enough to make Frisk cry.

You sit at the table drinking tea and eating pies, playing your vintage board game collection with Shonda and Papyrus who are also eating pies (although Papyrus still takes his to the other room and returns with clean plates), Nattie and Sans keep on making pies and chattering about the weirdest nonsense you think you’ve ever heard in your life… 101 uses for string, a proposed system for divination of fossilized poo, made up history ‘facts’… Shonda’s making reference jokes that only MK understands….

And then Angie and Toriel wander downstairs sheepishly, and Sans finally seems to notice he’s tired.

 _You_ finally notice yesterday was your birthday, the one you don’t celebrate because it’s also the day your mother died.

And that the table you and Papyrus have been using as a checkerboard for the last eight hours is actually Mettaton’s _face_. Er, display?

You and Sans look at each other, then at Angie and Toriel. The former blushes; the latter looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and casually purloins Nattie from the suddenly-drooping Sans. You wink at her, stand and gather up a short skeleton so well-floured he’s probably ready for deep-frying, and take him off to bed with you unwashed.

 

 

In February Sans has a complete breakdown and spends most of the extra-short month at Grillby’s. The bar’s not _exactly_ closed; the patrons can help themselves to anything as long as it’s Sans, and they can listen to any music they like as long as it’s The Smiths. They take breaks long enough for Papyrus to come and have a few milkshakes now and then, since no one else knows how to make them or what’s actually in them except Grillby, but otherwise spend their time in the back. _You_ spend a lot of time with Lola, who lets you know that not only are Sans and Grillby having a truly remarkable amount of sex, but that once again you’re welcome to join them.

You already know that, because there’s a part of you that can…um. You can trace the shape of it inside you; it’s kind of _distracting_ when you think about it. And it’s hard not to when you can hear the unintelligible timbre of his plaintive rambling, the need in his breathy taunts, the profound satisfaction in his soft cries all the way out here in the main room between songs. None of the monsters act like they hear anything… and maybe they can’t. Maybe you’re not... _hearing_. You consider asking Lola if she can, then remember she can always hear everything. You shift and blush, have another drink.

February is cold, but in Grillby’s it is very, _very_ warm. Occasionally downright… sweltering.

(hot and rough)

Lola leaves and comes back with two drinks. You shudder to the bone as you swallow it down.

You still apparently can’t deal with this at all, but you let Lola take you under the tablecloth and kiss you, realizing as her magic floods your mouth this is a lot more of an overtly sexual act for monsters than it is for humans. Which you probably should have realized before, but you still want to. She tastes like shattered cinnamon: dusty-sweet and buttery like Muffet’s spider donuts with an undercurrent of something metallic, sharp and disturbing. Like Toriel’s snail pie, she’s a sweetly spiced slice of life and death.

She tells you a story about a trip she and Grillby took under the ocean in some kind of sentient submarine before the barrier was made, before the War. They'd both been basically children at the time, although you’re getting the impression that childhood had lasted a lot longer back then, and time was a bit more malleable than it became after its imprisonment, much like the monsters trapped along with it. Grillby had wept nearly the entire time, and at first Lola had thought it was because he was afraid the water would come inside and kill him. He’d confessed to her that it was because he saw all the little lights the fish made and wanted to follow them, touch them. He was crying because he knew he never could, that he’d die if he tried. But it was just so _tempting_.

She kisses you again, then tells you a story about Grillby deciding to move to Snowdin after seeking Justice. Lola had given her permission for him to be Judged, even if it meant she too might meet her final fate without what he provides her. The days and nights underground grew too long for the kind of burdens Grillby carried, and Lola was nothing if not sympathetic to unbearable weights that grow heavier with time. All her children are gone-b/r/o/k/e/n-b/usted, and she might find herself in the hall at some point, too. But Grillby had survived touching Sans’s magic against all expectations, even that of the Judge, and he’d realized that many people that needed him were in Snowdin, and had no plans to come to him.

That the one who needed him most was there, too.

Instead of dying, Grillby and Lola had found something good, and they held on to him with everything they had. Sans became the person Lola could journey with through her pain with until they both came out alive on the other side; Lola gave Sans her voice-that-listens to share with everyone. Sans gave Grillby so much hope that a future could be possible he made more people to experience it from his own body, and Grillby gave Sans children that will never belong to anyone but themselves.

Lola kisses you a third time.

She and Sans make compassion together, Grillby and Sans make hope. You and Sans…you showed him how to make love, and all three are irreplaceable. Monster souls are threefold, and without all three he comes undone. Lola wants to taste you back and you come undone instead, muffling your cries in the dirty laundry Sans left under the table.

 

In March Sans and Papyrus keep falling quiet and moody at random intervals every time you stay over, baffling and frustrating you because they won’t tell you why. If you ask either of them about it, they avoid you for hours. Sometimes when the mood comes on, they leave the house or go to their rooms for a long time; once Papyrus scoops up Sans and spent 30 hours straight on the couch watching g-rated Mettaton musicals with his chin on his brother’s skull, both utterly silent and oblivious to anything else. You get cranky about it and spent the rest of the month at your place with your sister and the kids.

 

In April it occurs to you to ask Alphys about it while you stay over in The Hole for the latter half of the marathon checks session. Sans takes a nap, and she tells you a little indulgently that it’s probably because Frisk and MK are taking their souls out when MK stays over at the house. It’s where Frisk lives, after all, and that’s part of what someone does where they live. Alphys also explains with a giggle that when human souls are involved it can create effects beyond the usual, like when you and Sans had sent every single person, human and monster, into a peaceful, dreamless sleep by merging your soul with Sans’s at Toriel’s house on the final day of Frisk’s convalescence. Or when Tony and Aaron had created a sort of domino-like aphrodisiac effect at Grillby’s leading to a record number of tablecloths being handed out. Or the three straight days of Sans making pies nonstop.

(There isn’t a single monster above or below ground who hasn’t heard about that story by now; apparently Mettaton made a short and impressively pornographic film not based on the incident at all called _The Skeleton_ _Pâtissier_. Yeesh.)

You and Alphys talk about Frisk for a little while, wondering if their newly healed soul is what emboldened them to finally share themself this way, conclude that it probably is. The workings of Frisk and MK’s relationship is pretty mysterious to anyone that isn’t Frisk and MK.

You talk about the way magic’s expanding to fit in between everything else in the universe, about how good Undyne had looked at Mettaton and Papyrus’s wedding. You mention how putting a monster's magic in your eyes can make humans able to see something when you look at their soul, even if it’s not the same as when a monster does.

She gapes at you, and you didn’t realize it was something Frisk had been keeping a secret.

When Sans wakes up Alphys has you in her bashed-in, beaten down and unbelievably comfortable office chair, wheeled all the way into the kitchen. Shes doing all sorts of things involving her toaster-and-flashlight, the box with the hot pink wiggly stuff viewer, and several other boxy objects that do science things.

They tentatively posit that it’s possible there are colors monsters can see that you can’t.

 

In May nothing happens other than Nattie deciding to be a girl for two weeks, then putting their girlhood into a shoebox to be buried in the backyard of Toriel’s house; they record the funeral and request it be sent to their father after they’ve edited the footage and written an original score for the...film.

Well, other than the government being completely restructured/replaced with something called “infrastructure”. At this point the monsters have the most organized institutions and distribution systems in place on this particular continent, so the infrastructure decides to work closely with them to “rebuild and recover” something something blah blah politics. Ester the former pirate leaves OverEbott Monster Grocery and joins the infrastructure immigration committee for this designation or whatever it’s called now.

 

You keep your head down and power through to June.

 

Which is when you figure out that while Grillby is just as masculine as Sans is, the part that bothers you is that he is not also feminine the way that Sans is, or as many of the things he is that are truly neither. You find a way to tell him about it in the form of a story, which you give him during one of Sans’s shows sitting at table number seven after a few glasses of Grillby.

He’s not a man in the way human men are; he is, however, decidedly male in the way that some monsters are.

Grillby confesses in turn something that you hadn’t considered in this context: he can’t physically touch you for longer than a second or two without burning you to ash, and that makes him afraid of you. He’s drinking along with you, tall glasses of something you haven’t seen him imbibe before. Himself.

He tells you about Sans’s body, and the way their permeable magic can blend together to pleasure them both. It’s a lot like a kind of sex he would have been able to have with other fire elementals if there _were_ any, if he hadn’t been too young to do things like that before the barrier. That’s something he’s never been able to bring himself tell Sans, too worried he’d see pity (or something he could convince himself is pity) in his eyes. He could never bear that, because he is also a hypocrite. Sans doesn’t care about that, either.

You’re someone he’s never had before: someone who can tell Sans the things he can’t bear to say directly. Things he can’t say to Lola because of the nature of their relationship, because of the complex web of taboos that bind and protect them.

He’s flickering slow and strange in a way you’ve never seen before; eventually you realize he’s crying.

You’re someone he’s never had before: someone he can tell the things he can’t tell anyone else. Things he tells you for their own sake, because he wants you to know. You’re someone special to him; you come here because you like him, but you don’t...don’t _need_ him.

It’s true. It’s also true that you would come here even if Sans didn’t. You like it here, and you don’t actually drink all that often. You like the atmosphere of permissiveness, the community, the way the relaxed bustle holds you snug and safe in its undemanding not-aloneness. You like the way this place _is_ him. It’s a building that’s a person, and you love the way he is first and foremost with and for everyone. His personal relationships are secondary to his purpose, even as they’re the point of it, and there’s something about that… the way he is, he makes you feel…

You don’t say it, because you’re a lot like him that way.

You’re a lot like him in a lot of ways.

Hes someone you’ve never had before; someone who makes you understand why other people like you, because the ways you like him are the ways in which you’re alike.

He’s not used to this feeling: desire and its fulfillment. He hopes you will come here, and then you do. You’re so easy to talk to; not like you’ll always understand him, but like you value the process of trying to. You’re so interesting to listen to, you always say things he’s never heard before, never imagined. It makes him want to create, to push his own boundaries, to show you things and make...you feel…he wants you to know.

He wants you to _know_ him.

Sans keeps telling jokes as you and Grillby head to the back; instead of playing himself offstage he plays himself over behind the bar. The only thing he’ll pour is tall glasses of dark blue, and the only thing he serves is folded black tablecloths to drape for privacy.

He seems extraordinarily smug about something, even though you and Grillby are just talking.

For now.

 

“It’s July again,” you say quietly to Sans, then plant a kiss on his jaw. It makes him shiver slightly, and you didn’t even open your mouth. Hee hee.

You’re spending a lot of this summer at Grillby’s so far, spending nights until you can’t really deny you’re ‘staying’ in the sense monsters use. Sans has been doing shows about twice a week on average, and you’ve been planning pranks to pull during them with Frisk. The one with the little water squirt guns had been the best; Sans makes a fascinating sound when you manage to get him in the nasal cavity.

“mm. you gonna hang out here a bit, or keep goin?” he asks, watching Doggo hit on Aaron through narrowed sockets.

You sigh thoughtfully. “It really seemed like whatever it is was going to happen now,” you answer. “You know, other than _Papyrus and Mettaton’s Epic Divorce_.”

“guess not everything can go perfect math-wise. maybe that’d be jus’ a lil too pat.”

He doesn’t know exactly what you’re talking about, but he knows you get this way sometimes. Just like he gets certain ways sometimes. It’s a good balance, and even when you’re both having a bad time at the same time, the weight’s always distributed among enough people that no one breaks under it.

“I think if this is what comes next...if this is our ever after, I’m pretty satisfied with that,” you sigh, giving him a little squeeze. Then you grin and clonk your teeth gingerly against his cheek, which makes him laugh every time. This is of course no exception.

He hums a little “i don’t know” sound. “thought you implied somethin’s gonna shake things up soon?” You hear the light clink of his glass against his teeth under the music and general hubbub, since tonight he’s decided he lives in your lap. You usually let him if you’re having a good day…at least until his buttbones make your legs numb.

“didja check or something?” he adds in a whisper, and you shake your head adamantly. He relaxes a little.

“Maybe it’ll have something to do with the whole reintegration thing,” you mumble after a little while. You’re getting to know what monsters mean by “a few colors deep”; it’s when you combine different drinks for various mood effects. You let Grillby pour you a cocktail instead of just a straight shot of whatever like usual, and it turns out it makes you philosophical.

“I guess I bought into some of your theorizing after all,” you mutter, rubbing your thumb along his iliac crest and watching the magic glint across his zygomatic process smugly. “But more along the lines of…what’s going to happen with humans? I mean, the whole ‘can’t survive without trace minerals’ thing. In our current state, at least.” He’s still people-watching, but you can tell he’s both listening and interested. He's always interested in what you have to say, and that never ceases to send a little thrill into your soul. You let your forehead rest on the side of his skull, close your eyes as you continue.

“I mean. I probably won’t be around to see it,” you feel him tense, “not even the kids, maybe...but...I guess a lot of us won’t make it? Makes me wonder how it’s going to go...”

His arms tighten around you as you blather, and he gets warm in your lap. It makes you chuckle softly; he doesn’t like to think about it, and it also makes him want to fool around. It’s cute.

“mmm,” he exhales lasciviously into the neck of your shirt, giving you goosebumps. “you wanna pop in the back for a lil bit?”

You face burns with the fury of a thousand suns as you open your eyes, glance reflexively at the flaming bartender.

Sans laughs at you, because he remains an absolute bastard.

“think he mighta already figured out me n you been doing it,” he whispers with ironically widened sockets.

“Shut up,” you whine peevishly. “There’s a difference between knowing that and doing that in someone’s bed.”

Sans giggles heartily.“grillbz jus’ asked me to ask you sometime, cause he wanted to see if it’d make him fall asleep.”

You frown. “If it does, I’d be kind of worried. Can’t he just...go all over the place when he’s not paying attention?”

The expression Sans makes at that intensifies your blush considerably. “yeah, sometimes.” He cocks an orbital bone at you. “you worried bout something?”

“I’m _flammable_?” you point out to him, exasperated. “I’m pretty sure several of his customers are, too.”

Sans shrugs, then elaborates when you give him your pointiest stare.

“i mean...s’not like _i’d_ be asleep? if he got all over the place i could jus’ take him out for a lil adventure. burn up some hillsides i got squirreled away for emergencies.”

Then you both get distracted by the explanations, and he tells you the story of what happened the first time Sans saw the sun. It’s actually really touching, but the feeling that (something’s going to happen) doesn’t leave you. This is nice, so you decide to go ahead and have November now in case you want some of this for later.

 

You and Sans lean against each other comfortably, even though Frisk and MK look pretty tense.

“what’s up, bud? we can talk through whatever it is, you don’t have to be so stressed out.”

Frisk glances to the side, then looks over at MK.

MK sighs.

“I’m going to have a baby,” MK announces nervously.

“you don’t have to keep it if you don’t want to,” Sans points out gently, since they seem less than thrilled by their news. “can always find someone wants a kid.”

“It’s… not that,” they add, their normally cheerful demeanor inexplicably dampened.

“what's the problem, boblem?” he coaxes patiently.

“It’s...” they glance at Frisk.

“It’s mine,” they gesture decisively. “That’s the problem.”

You all stare silently for a good full minute or two. You’re kind of glad they decided to do this at the Skeleton Household, since this would probably be a lot more formal and intimidating over at Toriel’s.

“That is not possible,” Toriel says quietly. “Humans cannot have children with monsters.”

Frisk shoots an irritated look at their mother, then softens.

“That’s why it’s a _problem_ , mom,” they explain, looking visibly patient. “But they haven’t. Um.”

“don’t gotta elaborate on that,” Sans interrupts. “i’m pickin up what you’re puttin down, and...yeah. shouldn’t be possible, but it’s happening.” He frowns a moment, looks back at MK. “you know bout when this is set to go off, kiddo?”

MK grins weakly. “A few days, I think?”

“you decided where you wanna do it?” Sans asks.

You push your shoulder against his gently; he has good priorities. Right this second the why and how of it matters less than that it’s happening. Preparations for an expectant parent need to be made, and MK desperately needs the reassurance of pragmatism.

“I… was hoping I might be able to stay over at Grillby’s?” they ask hesitantly. Sans shoves a hand in his pocket immediately, while the other rasps a tear from under his socket.

“that’s snowdin’s kid,” he whispers proudly, then his voice gains strength as he addresses MK directly. “’m letting em know, k?”

MK blushes, but they seem comforted as they nod.

Sans glances at you as Toriel starts asking questions more pointed than Sans probably wants to pay attention to. “means they want us all to come by, bring em something, see the kid,” he explains. “all of us from snowdin that they stayed with.”

“Do a lot of people have their kids at Grillby’s?” you ask, curious despite the intensity of the current goings on at the table.

“nah,” he grins happily. “not since...uh...greater dog had his litter there few years back? wanted everyone to come see, fostered a few out right there. even annoying dog came ta that one.”

“I’m glad this is what it turned out to be,” you whisper softly.

He looks pleased about it too, then flinches as he catches a bit more of the conversation than he might like.

“you’re kinda killin us here, tori. maybe wanna cool it for now?”

Toriel’s mouth hangs open around a question involving exactly how much magic might have been pushed where and by whom, despite already knowing the answer by necessity, then shuts with a click.

“I...can be a _cool mom_ for now, I suppose.” Then her eyes and mouth narrow as she shoots a sidelong glance at MK. You’re starting to see where Frisk gets it from. “But we will have much to discuss in the future.”

“least we got one a those, now,” Sans adds quietly to you as Frisk and MK continue to wrangle more gently with Toriel, this time about the specifics of who will be on the visitation list that isn’t originally from Snowdin.

“Yeah,” you agree happily. “It’s nice.”  
“paps says he’s coming, too,” Sans adds after a minute. Papyrus has been ‘Out’ for about two days. “bout to head back now.”

MK’s looking more heartened by the moment. You’re glad to see it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got a feeling that some of the moments in this story that intuitively would seem climactic fall a bit short of the intensity a lot of people would expect from those plot points, and there's a reason behind it.
> 
> I really took the consistency of Sans's character from the neutral endings to heart when shaping the form of the romance. Pretty much any action hero type shit is happening totally offscreen in this tale. For example, what happened to Dr Foster aka Dr Pasta? Papyrus dealt with her, Sans doesn't care how, and you often find his priorities contagious. 
> 
> The degree that Sans is canonically willing to just...accept the worst is something I wanted to explore as much as I could, open up to try and explain those values, and their counterparts. I also wanted to purvey and explore the unusual conflict of/between being a person reading this and feeling that tension get unbearable, that NEED for someone to just DO SOMETHING...
> 
> But this is Sans.  
> He's not going to do ANYTHING.
> 
> The same way it takes unfathomable bravery to be the kind of person Papyrus is... it takes unimaginable capacity for love, pleasure, and happiness in order to be the kind of person Sans is, and to make the kinds of decisions he makes.
> 
> Exploring that has been incredibly rewarding, as has creating a pervasive atmosphere of acceptance, comfort, and deep love in the face of severe and complex traumas.  
> That being said, here it comes.


	73. where babies come from

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morrissey - November Spawned a Monster
> 
> https://youtu.be/cBdDjR0I-P4
> 
> (The puns are intentional, as is my inclusion of one of the few songs about disabled sexuality that exist.)

“This is a lot less stressful than a human birth,” you observe with equanimity, glancing over to where MK sits on the pallet on the floor, chatting and snacking peacefully with Frisk and Endogeny in close attendance.

“heh,” Sans winces. “saw one a those on a recording by accident once. kinda...messy? gotta do what you gotta do though, i guess.”

Sans doesn’t like blood. You nod and shrug.

All MK’s doing is eating until they’ve taken in enough magic to house the soul that’s finishing up in there. Once they have, they’ll call the new soul out and all of that extra magic will form around it into a new monster. That’s the part Sans has told you that you and Frisk probably won’t be able to actually _see_ it happening in the same way monsters can. He’d apparently been an attendant both times Grillby had…given birth?

You glance away from MK and Frisk to watch Sans watch them, every once in a while sliding a flattened, burnt disc from the pile on his plate between his teeth thoughtfully. His sockets go half mast as he tastes each one, exhaling in unfeigned pleasure. You catch a whiff and wrinkle your nose.

“This is _birth_ , right?” you ask idly.

He shrugs. “...yep. don’t use that word quite the same ’s humans do, but it’s the same thing.”

You’ve both gotten better at explaining things to each other _while_ they happen.

“The person being born...that’s your relative, right?”

Sans’s face softens.

“yeah,” he says quietly. Then his eye lights flicker briefly. “two different ways, now i think on it. grandkid through frisk, and uh….” He frowns. “sorta-grandkid through MK.”

“Double Grandpa Comic Sans Serif Microsoft the Skeleton,” you say, and his shoulders shake with helpless mirth.

“this what being old feels like?” He glances at you, then his grin flattens. “don’t answer that.” He doesn’t like it when you talk about actually getting old, and the implications thereof for you.

“way i’ll be related to this kid through mk is the same as undyne and gerson,” he continues, probably to change the subject. It works. “undyne’s waterfall’s kid.” He winks at you.

“Huh. You grin wryly. “Is that why she’s feral?”

“yup.” His sockets narrow at you happily, and he leans his chin on his folded fingers as he plays with your hand.

Now that you know more about how monster sexual taboos work, you’re kind of glad MK and Frisk found each other. MK’s options for sex and romance had been unusually limited due to their sheer number of close relatives. It’s part of the reason Grillby had sent his own children to Hotland to be fostered; it allowed them the chance to find partners in Snowdin and maximized the chances they might settle there as adults.

(The other reason of course being so they could go through their phase of elemental restlessness without getting murdered by the environment. Heats Flamesman never actually progressing past the restlessness was not exactly an unforeseen turn of events, and Grillby’s just happy that Heats Flamesman is happy. He also visits a lot with Sans’s help, but never actually stays very long. Heats Flamesman.)

Fuku had decided to settle in Snowdin, although of course none of them had had any way to anticipate that the barrier would fall before she came of age. Grillby had stayed in UnderEbott until she had, then had given her the original Grillby’s bar (now Fuku’s) and come to OverEbott to be with the monsters here… to be with Sans, you’ve slowly picked up on over time.

Another thing you’ve come to understand more recently is that Grillby...really _isn’t_ a husband. You try to think of what the equivalent might be in a human relationship, in the style of humans from around here at least. Hmm. He’s more like Sans’s best friend from his old hometown who owns a local bar/restaurant that he goes to a few times a week, at least. Where he goes when life gets to be too much, when he can’t deal with a conflict, when his thoughts get wonky and he needs to get his skull straight.

Like best friends who every once in a while book a week at a fishing cabin where they fuck each other senseless, which is neither a secret nor anyone’s business. Except yours, apparently.

Your face gets hot.

It’s _really_ your business now, isn’t it. _Hoo boy._

Maybe you should have-

There’s a big crash from the back that makes you jump out of your thoughts if not your skin, and you can smell something burning. Which is mildly concerning considering everything in this building except the people and the food is fireproof.

You open your mouth, but Sans starts talking first.

“if it’s burning, it’s supposed to,” he explains. “paps knows what he’s doing, and if he forgets what that is exactly, grillbz is there to take care of it.”

Grillby’s been cooking and sending it out since MK started doing whatever this is, and so had Papyrus, but whatever he’s making is actually for the baby MK is… growing. Currently. He’s apparently considered some sort of specialist in that regard, at least as far as Grillby is concerned. A baby food specialist.

“Is it true MK would only eat what you gave them when they were a baby?” you ask after a little bit.

“mm?” Sans looks at you through one socket. “did paps-”

“I think it’s happening,” MK rushes out breathlessly. It cuts right through the noise and even Sans’s voice, so you’re pretty sure they added some oomph to their announcement. Frisk huddles in for them to lean into their bulk if they want to, and they do. It’s your understanding that MK’s asked Frisk to pull the new soul; an optional tradition sort of like having a partner cut the birthing cord.

Toriel’s kneeling behind Frisk so she can watch the proceedings carefully; there’s no reason to assume anything will go wrong, but if it does she’s the most likely person able to do something about it. It’s also noticeably calming Frisk to have their mother right behind them as they and MK prepare for the birth of their theoretically impossible child. Everyone’s just going to have to kind of see what happens.

MK’s face goes odd and introspective, like they’re listening very carefully to something no one else can hear. Papyrus and Grillby come into the room from the back, set a few plates on the bar before approaching the rest of the way. You and Sans get up to go and sit on the floor with everyone else at a casual distance to witness and encourage.

MK shifts a little, cuddles into Frisk a bit more. Frisk’s hand stays tucked under MK’s chin as their nictitating membranes slide halfway up their eyes, deepening their dreamy expression. You feel a little squidgey for a minute when you notice their postures and expressions remind you almost exactly of how you hold Sans after...certain kinds of intimacy. Then you get over it since it’s nowhere near as squidgey as staring up someone’s vagina waiting for a small human being to get squozen out of it.

“It’s time,” MK says quiet-thick, and Frisk pulls.

A luminous-white inverted heart follows their fingers to hover in front of MK’s chest, and Sans and Papyrus gasp in unison as soon as the purple and blue iridescence dancing across the new soul becomes obvious. Sans crawl-staggers forward across the floor towards them as Papyrus inadvertently garbles out a dissonant tone or two. Frisk’s arm tightens on MK a moment as their dark irises glitter, but they keep their hand cupped underneath protectively as...something… that looks like a heat haze begins to obscure the new soul.

Papyrus comes closer to join Sans, hunkers down to hold his brother breathlessly as they watch the new monster...being born.

“…paps,” Sans breathes shakily, but nothing else follows it.

Nobody says anything else; you all just watch and inch closer as wavering white runs across the soul. Rows of lightly iridescent magic run like rippling water up and down the inverted heart floating higher above Frisk’s fingers as more physicality is spun out between the magic MK’s body is providing to house the new person.

As the magic...thickens...you all realize something the brothers already did.

This is a _skeleton_.

Like Sans and Papyrus.

With two human traits on their monster’s soul.

Well, apparently _now_ it’s time to remember (experience) the way Papyrus’s

 

body had also been inside his body, _between_ his body, sparking and sparkling with something (something)

680 _somethings_ that retained the memory of bones, suspended delicately by and between...him. His magic; his soul. Love-hope-compassion; bones-magic-soul. He’s three; he’s six.

He’s two plus himself (he’s two twice), he’s 680; he’s 8, 2, and twenty twice simultaneously.

He looks the way Sans looks when you get his magic in your eyes: numbers that are a shape(s), a number(s) in the shape of a person. Sans is two and one, he’s five once and twice; he’s _ten_ , he’s five-plus-you, he’s infinitely divisible so that each atom of you has a counterpart inside him.

That’s what you feel when you put you body inside his body, the complex resonance inside his ribcage….the math that joins his magic to his soul, and his fragile physicality to both. It feels _between_. It feels… infinitely divisible. Like no matter how _between_ you go, there’s always more in-between to be.

He’s _one_ , and you’re considerably more finite than he is. When his magic gets in(side) your eyes...you can see it.

 

The skeleton being born…

is…

A counter, going up

A shape, forming

A soul, becoming:

Love-Hope-Compassion

Integrity and Perseverance

 

A vector, a matrix, numbers spinning themselves out from another infinity to become a lesser infinity of _one_ dimension (all one soul)… then two ( _two_ dimensions; souls have _two dimension_ _s_ they’re just, just always _facing_ you somehow, how did you _not realize that before_ ), then expanding along yet another axis to create a third dimension…

A body.

Magic infinitely expanding, multiplying possibilities with(in) itself until the product ( _the_ ( ~~what Sans produces~~ ) _product_ ) makes the impossible...possible.

An entirely new _person_.

A miracle, and something that happens every day.

An entirely new _being_.

What’s to say the same isn’t true of anyone?

 

Sans hands came out, and now they’re _counting_

340…

500…

520…

 

it’s slowing down, shimmering and separating (merging)… solidifying as the (SOUL) becomes less visible...wait, no. It’s just becoming whatever the opposite of _condensed and exposed_ is, spun out like a web to arrange the numbers in the shape of a new person.

 

It’s weird because you can’t actually see most of it. You just know what’s happening because you’ve seen Sans and Papyrus’s bodies with their magic in your eyes, like you’re watching what’s happening right now through the memory of what they looked like to you. You (know-without-seeing), which is a sensory experience you’ve never had before.

It’s a _sense_ you didn’t.

Have before.

Or maybe you _did_ , and you never had anything to perceive with it before. Sight in a lightless universe.

It turns out 525 is the magic number.

 

Now Frisk holds MK’s baby close to their chest from behind. They weep softly together at the tiny infant skeleton, about to come to life in their arms.

 

They take their first breath

 

and add the fourth dimension to their existence.

 

**Time**.

 

Sans makes a very strange grunt, rubs his sternum in your peripheral vision. Your memory records it for later, because your brain might be on pause or something.

 

They don’t look anything like Frisk or MK. They look like a human skeleton (you wonder briefly if they look like _Frisk’s_ skeleton, then your mind just sort of shuts off for a second). A human skeleton with impossible, visible darkness inside, light-dark tinged with softly iridescent blue-violet.

 

“Oh shit…” you breathe; you don’t notice everyone’s eyes snapping to you, because you’re too busy staring at the tiny, perfect, infant living skeleton MK is holding. “…the Abortion Goo.”

“W-WHAT?” Papyrus squawks, appalled.

“Sorry,” you say reflexively, then lower your voice by a massive margin. “Sorry, um...the Stuff Sans makes. That’s how this happened.”

“you’re _really_ gonna hafta explain this one, readz,” Sans mumbles faintly.

“The...when the piece of Chara’s soul went back to Frisk,” you reply. Your whisper sounds unthinkably far away to your ears. Your gaze is still transfixed by those teeny, tiny phalanges. How can bones be so small?

They’re like...microscopic. Holy shit.

“Chara’s soul is _still there_. Frisk h-has _two traits_ , they’re just-” you hiccup strangely, “-they’re the _same_ trait.” Twice as purple as usual. “Two souls, both whole now…they’re right there _on top of each other_. In the s-same place at the same time.”

You don’t know if anyone’s listening. You can barely hear yourself, you’re so dumbfounded.

“The goo Flowey absorbed _went with_ it, along with the piece. Into Frisk.”

You look at Sans. His eye lights are gone.

“They have a piece of _you_ as part of _them_. Their soul. Frisk’s really _your_ kid now in like...a… metaphysical quasi-biological way, and-”

Your voice breaks.

They’re so tiny. Teensy little phalanges grasping at Frisk’s big ol sausage fingers.

“This is _your grandkid_...and….”

A cloud of midnight blue passes, scuds away from the truth.

“...and mine, I guess,” you croak, voice husked with shock.

“holy shit,” Sans adds shakily. “i don’t really _get_ it, but...” His eyes come back into existence hesitantly; his voice is breathy and weird. “you...you’re right, even though… i jus’...feel it.” He rubs high on his sternum like he’s checking for a bruise.

“Yeah,” you agree vehemently.

“WHAT DOES THAT MAKE ME?” Papyrus asks, almost managing to make his voice sound small.

You make an odd noise that might be a laugh. “In English? Um. The relationship...would be, um….Great Aunt or Uncle, or...you don’t have to, um...”

“I’M THEIR GREAT _PAPYRUS_ ,” he says softly, tears welling up and overflowing from his sockets, sliding unheeded down bone until they soak into the gloves covering the hands clasped under his chin.

“yeah you are, bro,” Sans whispers shakily, wiping his own sockets on his sleeve. “this is weird.” Papyrus makes a noise of objection; Sans’s eye lights dart to his face, and he shakes his skull gently. “nah...s’like, i can’t have kids, but….got a _grandkid_? skeleton grandkid. s’weird.”

You put your arm around his shoulders.

“didn’t really understand anything you said just then,” he admits, wrapping an arm around your waist and giving it a little squeeze. You can relate, as someone who also apparently now has been granted a living skeleton grandchild and a possible also regular style kid in Frisk in the same day.

“Well. That’s okay,” you say quietly as Grillby goes to get the first plates of food while everyone sort of creeps in toward the new person. “We can talk about it as long as we need to later.”

“probably ask alphie ta sit in on that,” he mutters, as transfixed as you are.

“They are beautiful,” Toriel sighs. “May I?”

MK nods and smiles wearily; Frisk holds the naked skeleton baby up to Toriel, who has brought the swaddling blanket (a gift from Undyne; it’s patched already but looks soft as all heck) and expertly folds the infant up into it before taking them into her giant goat arms.

Everyone in the immediate family gets a turn to hold them in between being fed Papyrus Super Awesome Baby Rotini; when it gets to be your turn, you’re...wow.

Wow.

The funny thing is, you know exactly what to say.

You’ve said it already.

“Hey kid,” you begin quietly. “I ever tell you about the time your grandpa got in a fight at bowling alley with a guy twice his size?”

You hear a dry little sobbing noise from Sans, who might be the only person close enough to really hear your teeny tiny baby-sized whisper.

“I had to charge in and rescue him from his own mouth, which incidentally is the _filthiest_ mouth I’ve ever heard on a bag o’ bones not even shoulder high to a Cadillac,” you gush, watching something like faint eye lights trying to come into existence in those deep, round sockets. You can’t tell what color they are; you don’t even know what colors they _can_ be other than white or black. “He was so overcome by my gallant demeanor he broke every glass in that place right there on the floor,” you continue breathily as smooth skeletal fingers rub a little circle between your shoulderblades, “swooning and gagging at my next level butch apotheosis. Then he did his best Mettaton impression by taking a leaping swan dive into my arms like it was goddamn Shakespeare in the Park.”

“And that, my fine child-” you bring your face very close to theirs and make increasingly intense eye contact, “-is _where babies come from_.*”

Sans is doing a weak, sobbing laugh; when you hand the baby back to Toriel, Endogeny froths their way over to get a better look now that they’re up farther from the ground again. They undulate happily, joyful and exuberant at their family’s newest member. There’s a chorus of dissonant barkish noises, and the hole that functions as a face turns down toward MK...curiously?

“monster kid 2: electric boogaloo,” Sans chortles from next to you, wiping his sockets with a sleeve-wrapped fist. MK’s nictitating membranes come up to shield their eyes from Sans’s bad jokes, pretending he didn’t say anything as they lean back further into Frisk to answer Endogeny’s question.

“You bet,” they say softly; Frisk smiles with tears in their eyes. “Frisk wanted to give them a baby name when they’re born like humans do.” MK sighs, subdued but joyful.

“We decided on ‘Sariel’.”

 

_Oh, one fine day_   
_Let it be soon_   
_She won't be rich or beautiful, but she'll be walking your streets_   
_In the clothes that she went out and chose for herself._

 

* Chapter 14, in case you couldn’t quite place the callback ;)

 

* * *

 

 

MA T H E M A G I C A L

I get that this is some weird shit. There will be more explanation in the next chapter, but the happenings are based in the conceptual part of continuum mechanics. There’s stuff having to do with dimensions and also some quantum stuff happening, but...yeah.

Some of this has to do with the values I assigned the continuums based on their stats and damage, which is so much more ridiculously complicated than it needed to be?

Like, take the mathematics of how _Sans’s_ battle damage works. It is just sooOoo upsetting, and once you get into it, the “easiest enemy. Only does 1 damage” gets funnier and FUNNIER.

The battle has two objects:

“obj_sansb” and “obj_sansb_body”

All of Sans's attacks do 1 damage of KR(KARMA), and drops your invincibility frames to ZERO (his attacks hit EVERY frame, which can be up to 30 times per second). It also applies a drain effect to the attack. So, um, getting hit for ONE frame inflicts ONE damage, BUT!it increases the value: KR by 5, 6, 10, 2, or 1, depending on the attack.

It looks like this:
    
    
    obj_boneloop_v: self.innate_karma = 5
    obj_bonestab: self.innate_karma = 6
    obj_gasterblaster: self.innate_karma = 10
    obj_menubone: self.innate_karma = 2
    obj_menubone_bottom: self.innate_karma = 1
    obj_sannasbullet_parent: self.innate_karma = 6 – default

Whenever the KR value is above zero, it eventually drains back down to zero, doing damage in increments of one.

And that’s just the y axis of this cockshit rigamarole.

Then you have the x axis being _time_.

First you have the amount of time (frames) you were in contact with a given attack, which then calculates the amount of time it will take to drain your HP.

KR takes one frame to drain 1 if maxed out at 40, two frames to drain 1 if KR value is between 30—39, five frames to drain 1 (if KR= 20—29), fifteen frames (half a second!!) to drain 1 (if KR=10—19), and thirty frames (ONE second lmao) to drain 1 (if KR= 1—9). This means that KARMA when at max value drains halfway within 66 frames (2.2 seconds); and drains completely after 491 frames (about 16.453 seconds. Guess who’s a bastard moving around decimal points).

If you crave more try here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Underminers/comments/4jwlqr/kr_rates/

If you enjoy feeling frustrated, try here:

https://www.continuummechanics.org/

And if you want to know what the hell this kind of math has to do with spacetime and/or want to cry tears of blood:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262452436_From_continuum_mechanics_to_general_relativity


	74. more of the same

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [mention of menstruation, discussion of past unhealthy sexual practices]
> 
> Mazzy Star – Fade Into You  
> https://youtu.be/ImKY6TZEyrI
> 
> to clarify:  
> “Sariel” is an anagram of “Asriel”; only two letters are switched but it’s a surprisingly effective smokescreen. I’ll leave it to your imagination whether Toriel noticed or not. There’s no tradition of skeletons naming themselves after their fonts yet because they’re the first skeleton ever born. Does Sariel have a font? Entirely possible. Do we know what it is? Not until they tell us.

You stare at Alphys and Sans; they stare back at you.

“…run that by me one more time,” Sans mutters, frowning.

You exhale as patiently as you can, answer seriously instead of saying ‘well, you better go catch it.’

“Frisk has two souls. They _still_ have two souls.”

Alphys’s nictitating membranes come up to hood her gaze from underneath.

“But...”

“They’re both Perseverance.”

Yep. You lost both of them again; time to try a different tactic. You rub your chin and try and think of one, so of course you immediately get distracted.

Tomorrow’s the first time you’ve been invited to celebrate a strange monster holiday that has an unexpectedly solemn tone; it’s the fifteenth anniversary of the barrier being broken. Before you the only human to observe it has been Frisk, and they’ve told you humans aren’t missing out on much. Basically a cross between one of Papyrus’s parties and a funeral where they remember all the monsters who lost hope before they could see the sun.

Sans has been pretty moody the last day or two leading up to it, which makes sense considering it sounds like a fucking bummer. Not outwardly, just in one of the ways you’re starting to realize might only be perceptible to you because of the bond you and he share. The one you’d invented together in some unhappened timeline, and that you’d...activated?…somehow in this one. It’s not like a constant stream of information or anything; it just makes it even easier for him to read your face, and it makes it even harder for him to lie to you. It’s the kind of intuition a couple might have after being together three times as long as you actually have been.

You exhale absently when you consider how much sense that makes. You try not to think about how many times you and he have tried to make it to the deadline and failed, how many times you’ve lost each other. Forgotten each other. You try to think about how many times you’ve found each other instead when that keeps you from sleeping. When it’s late at night and Sans is working, either in The Hole or on one of his science trips with Alphys.

You’d been discussing the possibility of asking Alphys about the bond, maybe having her quantify it or examine it if possible; then of course Sariel had caved the metaphorical roof in and that idea got put on the back burner for the moment.

“Sans, do you remember the first time we didn’t die?”

His skull inclines cautiously.

“You said something to me when I...figured out what happened to us. How you would think dying and then...having it _un_ _happen_ would take a piece of you away, take a piece of your soul. But you said it adds a piece instead, and you have to make room for it.”

“T-t-hat’s not-”

“Let’s pretend it does,” you interrupt Alphys quickly, before she can say ‘that’s not how it works’ for the umpteenth time. It’s not that it’s annoying you or anything, more just that it’s one of the pitfalls of being entrenched in any discipline for long enough. It gets harder and harder to absorb new information that changes the rest of what you know, even if (and sometimes especially if) something unprecedented happens. It’s not like you’re immune to it, you just happen to be on the other side of it right now.

Sans has asked you to take a break during your brainstorming session with Alphys to try and explain your theory of what happened to make Sariel possible, since absolutely nothing either of them knows can even begin to account for it. And that’s after as many exams as Frisk would allow of themself, Sariel, and MK (who seemed happy enough to sit there all day. You wonder if MK’s really Sans’s child too underneath it all sometimes, although everyone’s told you they used to rival Papyrus’s energy levels as a child).

“Okay, so Chara’s soul gets...” you sigh. “Absorbed by Asriel. They die, and Chara’s soul becomes part of Asriel’s dust.” No objection there; good, since they’re the ones who gave you the information you needed to put that together in the first place. “Flowey gets woken up with determination injections and...activates...the part of Chara’s soul that remembers Asriel, regardless of whether or not he himself is truly present. That’s our unknown quantity, and doesn’t really matter for this model.”

They make a perfectly synchronized gesture of conditional acceptance. It’s adorable.

“Okay,” you continue, “so Flowey combines Chara’s postmortem levels of determination which are so high due to premortem occurrence, reaction to postmortem events, and the fact that their soul is fractured in a way that shouldn’t be possible with being an originally soulless and non-sapient plant...and figures out he can’t die the first time he tries to commit suicide. It doesn't work because Chara doesn’t want him to die, and he can’t exist or make decisions like that without Chara’s participation because they’re sort of fused onto each other forever. Right?”

Hesitant nods.

“What Sans’s body made...it made them able to separate,” you try, and Alphys’s face immediately twists into denial.

“It doesn’t work that way,” she objects strenuously.

“Alphys, just...bear with me,” you say reasonably enough for someone who’d been asked to explain this as many times as you have, with the exact same reaction each time. Luckily you’re an academic, and have built up a resistance to this particular species of frustration.

“Because of the way Papyrus helped Flowey, he was able to turn the Sans stuff into love-hope-compassion when he absorbed it, do whatever he needed to do to atone for whatever fucked up shit he did, and go back into the hivemind or whatever it is you guys are while you’re not alive,” you report bluntly, and you see the little bone folds at the corners of Sans’s fixed grin twitch. Alphys darts a skewering look at her skeletal labmate, then just exhales slowly and lets it go for now.

“But then,” you say extra slowly like that’s going to help, “the piece of Chara’s soul that was still Chara went back in to the rest of Chara’s soul when Flowey died.” You take a deep breath. “And where was the _rest_ of Chara’s soul?”

Sans frowns hard.

“frisk,” he grunts, looking a million miles away.

Alphys just looks like she has to pee, except you know better. Cloacas.

“So we have Frisk with _two whole souls_ now, which passes under the radar because they’re the same trait. But they’re still two separate people without actually being separate,” you try yet again; this is the part they’re having a hard time with. And honestly so are you, but with different parts and for different reasons.

You didn’t realize how much monsters’ worldviews are affected by the way their own souls work. All the same soul; completely different people until they’re not. But human souls can be the same trait, and _not_ be the same person. Apparently even after death.

“But the souls aren’t...” You get a weird idea. “They’re one and two at the same time,” you try, and Sans’s eye lights flicker sharply.

“huh,” he mutters quietly.

“Okay,” you try, encouraged, “so…the stuff you made changed Flowey, but also changed the part of Flowey that was Chara,” and you barely understand the words coming out of your own mouth, but it looks like this is really working for Sans so you keep at it.

“And the way it changed Chara made them able to reproduce with monsters, because it remembered how to be a monster from when it was part of Flowey,” and oh shit, he’s really...he’s _getting_ it; you’re not even sure _what_ he’s getting but he is.

You exhale explosively.

Explaining concepts you don’t entirely understand yourself to people who are coming at the idea from a totally different angle is not easy.

“I’m like 60% sure _that’s_ what the stuff you make is...not _supposed_ to do, but...”

He looks a little sick around the sockets, and you can’t really blame him.

“It’s like...” you think hard, “...like literal baby batter. Makes people who couldn’t usually have kids able to have them because...it’s...”

He’s covering his face, but you can tell he’s laughing.

“raw material,” he mumbles.

You feel relieved.

“oh man,” he says after a bit. Alphys still rubs his back, even though he wasn’t crying or anything. “god, that’s weird. k, go head n say the rest of whatever’s burning a hole in your pocket.”

You don’t want to validate his mixed metaphor, but he asked.

“I’m pretty sure that’s how you and Papyrus got born,” you admit reluctantly. You think back to the first conversation you’d ever had with Flowey, the way he’d laughed and said you made the skeletons sound like one of Toriel’s pies. Monster juice and human soul extract. Maybe a part of you knew-without-knowing, even then.

“Stuff from ‘the ones who make siblings’ or whatever.” You sigh. “I don’t think you _have_ a second parent. Like...not exactly clones, obviously. You and Papyrus aren’t even close to identical. But I suspect it’s a similar sort of process with a different result.”

Sans looks slightly grossed out and moderately confused. “how would that even work?”

You with with that for a long minute. “Well. Let’s start with how I think it might normally work. Sort of like how Sariel got born?”

A set of cautious nods.

“The monster parent’s soul divides, they donate part of the magic from their body, and there’s at least one human trait inherited from the parent who has them,” you muse absently, thinking hard. “If they were both skeletons… maybe one from each?”

Alphys grunts. “T-there would h-have to be a piece of the other p-parent’s body too. In t-this scenario at least. S-s-something physical.”

“how would a piece of frisk even get _in_ there, though?” Sans asks ingenuously, and you find yourself rubbing the bridge of your nose and blushing.

“Um,” you start weakly, then decide you don’t really want to go there. “Alphys, you gave Frisk the puberty and sex talks, right?”

She snorts and nods.

“Maybe _you_ should ask Frisk and MK about that,” you suggest as tactfully as possible. “Because I extremely do not fucking want to. You can interview them and ask all the questions Toriel keeps trying to, and I’ll read whatever you put on a nice, distant, _hypothetical_ piece of paper.”

Sans glances between you and Alphys in confusion, so you continue before he can start volunteering information.

“I don’t want to know what kind of junk Frisk has,” you explain quickly. “I’d like to think it wouldn’t change the way I treat them, but I’m just as much a product of my culture as anyone else is.” Oh. He’s missing something. “Sans, you know what human genitalia is _for_ , right? When it’s on an actual human?”

“that’s not how it works,” he protests strenuously, makes you bury your face in your hands with a sigh. Not him too. At this point you’re going to start having a conditioned reaction to that phrase.

Alphys titters, then has mercy on you both and spends a minute whispering in Sans’s acoustic meatus. He glances at you and carefully tucks his hands into his pockets, looking mildly disturbed. Alphys stops talking before the expression on his face tips over into active disgust, and you smirk a little.

“Are we in the same boat now, Sans?”

“yup,” he answers shortly, expression returning to normal.

“What I’m curious about is how this fits into the rest of…your theories,” you say to Sans hesitantly. Not really a question, so he can answer or not as he decides.

He sighs. “retrocausality, maybe,” he mumbles, rasping his thumb along his forehead. “might be a causal loop, might be a stable paradox. Objects without origin, ya know?”

Alphys grunts peevishly.

“Do _you_ want to explain that?” she gestures at you, and you nod.

“If the stuff Sans makes interacts outside of time like souls can, then whatever happened first wouldn’t actually matter as much,” you sigh reluctantly. “It messes with the time dimension of things...existing and changing. Changes the math so that cause and effect don’t always happen the way they’re supposed to? The way we’re _used_ to, at least.”

Alphys makes the conditional acceptance gesture, so you continue.

“Not only that, one of Sariel’s traits is Integrity. So that might matter even less.” You blink rapidly for a minute. “Speaking of which, where did that even come from?”

Alphys gives you a frown. “F-from _you_ ,” she says like it’s obvious. You glance away, rub your sternum self-consciously. Alphys sighs and continues aloud.

“Sans’s s-stuff remembers how to be things,” she stutters softly. “It doesn’t h-have its own intent, but it...reacts to it. Your p-p-presence made the reaction p-possible, so it...” She finishes in gestures. “It remembers how to be love, hope, compassion, Integrity, Patience, and Justice. Sariel has 525 physical components; it’s possible half of those came from Frisk, as did the Perseverance. The rest of Sariel’s body is made of magic, like all monsters.”

“And the rest of monster’s physicality comes from their parents, right?”

Alphys nods. “That’s how it works now, yes. Monsters used to be able to draw from the environment, but once the barrier happened, the only place there was _stable_ physical substance was our own bodies.”

“As opposed to what fell down and turned into magic?”

A synchronized gesture of agreement. Still adorable.

Unfortunately, now it’s time to finally push them into telling you whatever it is that’s making them both sit with you this long, explaining over an over again. Because unless they had some kind of incontrovertible evidence that Sariel is without a doubt Sans’s grandchild, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to figure out _why_ and _how_ it happened.

“Okay,” you sigh out loud as they glance at each other uncomfortably. “Go ahead and tell me.”

“Sans is aging,” Alphys says bluntly. “From what I’ve seen it must have started as soon as Flowey died, but considering everything else that happened at the same time it’s not that surprising Sans didn’t notice. And once Frisk woke up, he probably just assigned that feeling of time passing to the new status quo.”

“Frisk not being able to RESET anymore,” you gesture, and Alphys nods to confirm the truth of it before continuing. Sans just sits there looking vaguely sleepy, supremely unruffled by his newly acquired mortality.

“But when Sariel was born that was the only thing that changed, and he felt it happen in a way he didn’t before. Along with the fact that they are obviously a skeleton,” she gestures with an ironic twist to her scaly lips. “Although I don’t understand how any monster could have a child without _intent_ , since it’s not like Sans decided to-”

“i _did_ decide, though,” Sans interrupts in a quiet, firm voice. “decided when i gave it to em.”

Alphys looks to you for additional information. Possibly a translation.

“The reason he gave the stuff to Frisk in the first place is because they’re ‘his kid’” you inform her slowly. “There wasn’t any intent when we made it, because of the way it happened. I don’t know if it works that way, but he kept it in his phone until then, other than when he let you test it to see what it was.” You feel your brow crease in consideration. “When he gave it to them, it was kind of a big deal? There was a lot of...emotional stuff happening.”

“That would probably make a difference,” she gestures reluctantly.

“So does this mean Sans is going to...to _die_?” You say it aloud, and clear your throat to try and make it sound less like a frightened child’s. “Eventually?”

“hey,” Sans gives you a slow, calm smile. “that’s not gonna be for a real long time, okay?”

“How long?” you insist.

“until sari has a kid and that kid grows up.” He shrugs, seeming unconcerned, but sighs at your expression. “third gen, remember? it doesn’t bother me cause that’s how boss monsters are supposed to work,” he explains.

“But you got two generations at once,” you say quietly. “Um. Well, I guess...” Frisk had actually been his kid from the moment Flowey turned to dust, so that’s not correct. “You found out about it all at once.”

Sans’s smile doesn’t waver. “yeah…i felt something when sariel got born.” He rubs at his sternum lightly, thoughtfully. “like time finally… started? i dunno. happening in a way i could feel? that sound weird?”

“Considering how weird my relationship with time is at this point?” You exhale slowly. “Not really. Yes? I don’t know...”

You look at Alphys helplessly.

“Are you and Undyne ever going to have kids?”

Alphys turns an interesting color, but acts like she didn't hear you. Sans is chuckling, and when you look over at him he seems…proud?

“Fuck,” you mutter, covering your eyes briefly. “That’s super rude, isn’t it.”

“yeah,” he giggles like a true bastard. “at least ‘s bad as the time i told your sister i could tell which one of you took a dump by the smell,” he squeaks, and you accept his invitation to the discomfort-diffusing snortfest. It’s one of those moments that goes even deeper than cultural difference, and reminds you you’re literally a different species. Sans goes ahead and explains a few sociocultural expressions of human aversion to the smell and presence of bodily waste products to Alphys, which helps to balance out the embarrassment levels and smooths things over. He’ll probably explain how you fucked up in more detail later, when Alphys isn’t there so as not to compound your misstep.

“Wait a sec,” you interrupt. “Is _that_ why monsters always laugh at your ‘who farted’ joke?”

“probably?” Sans replies, and that sets all three of you off again. Sans sighs out the last of his mirth, then droops melodramatically. “you good for today, al? ‘m feelin’ pretty bushwhacked.”

Alphys admits her horizons have been broadened enough for now, and you make plans to meet again for what had been your intended purpose, which was brainstorming ways to break the whole "reintegration of magic possibly leading to an unexpected step in human not-actually-evolution" thing to humanity in general. Without causing another war, at least. Sans’s decision to tag along had hijacked it as usual, although now you’re realizing that he and Alphys had probably planned it as a way to tell you about Sans’s aging.

Whatever.

 

You go back to your place, which is empty except for you and Sans tonight. Angie’s over at Toriel’s with the kids; they’ve been spending a lot of time there since Sariel was born. Frisk’s been staying near their mother to get advice and day to day help with figuring out the whole ‘parent’ thing; Toriel’s been absolutely thrilled by the whole experience. Angie’s been a big help too when it comes to interjecting advice with human limitations taken into consideration; having a baby that apparently doesn’t need to sleep more than once a week brings a dimension to new parenthood that Frisk was prepared for even less than the parenthood part. The dual turbo-moms have been overjoyed to turn Toriel’s house into an impromptu Mom School; you’re not sure you’ve ever seen Toriel this happy.

 _You’re_ overjoyed to drop your jeans in the kitchen, walk your way out of them and enjoy the cool breeze from the fridge as you eat some cooked beans out of a container with your hand.

“that human food?” Sans mutters, then does his yell-yawn from slightly behind you.

“Yeah. Sorry, sweetie,” you explain with your mouth full. You use a bean-y finger to indicate a few jars and tupperwares of varying fullness on the top shelf; he ignores the monster food leftovers and pulls a trusty bottle of ketchup out of the door instead.

“heh heh…sweetie.”

You’ve been trying out pet names on him, since it eventually occurred to you that maybe he calls you by them because he likes that sort of thing. It doesn’t come very naturally, but he’s never minded your awkwardness. Actually seems to enjoy it, in fact. He said something the other day about the way your affectionate gestures are ‘on purpose’ reminds him of falling in love with you, how you’re so deliberate about it. Makes him feel important, like you really thought about it.

You look over your shoulder at him, eyeball his soft expression surreptitiously.

“You like that one?”

“mm…i like all of em. s’nice.”

You suck your fingers clean, then rummage in the drawer next to you for a butterknife as Sans shoulders his way in to stand at the fridge alongside. He seems to have abandoned his shorts as well; although he doesn’t wear any underpants, the bottom of his shirt and hoodie cover his broad pelvis. Oh, here we go. It’s a jar of preserves Toriel makes from the sour fruit shred things.

“Is it just me, or does MK seem less than interested in being a parent? Is that weird to say?” you ask, then suck sweet goo off the utensil with a pleased, nasal exhale.

Sans shrugs, then parts his teeth to let you slide the butterknife into the tiny gap on the left side where his jaw’s less fused. “seems like frisk’s got it covered,” he replies, unconcerned. “heh. if they didn’t tori’d be all over that. she might snatch em anyhow if frisk isn’t careful.”

His sockets oval happily, and he huffs in amusement as you manage to remove the now-clean flat of the knife without scraping against his teeth. You’ve had a lot of practice by now, like one of those antique electronic ‘don’t touch the sides’ type of board games from your collection. He peers into the fridge in search of something else to snack on, finds a package of sliced...something. It’s white. Could be cheese. Could be cold cardboard.

“think mk’s working on one of their, uh. puzzles?” he continues, sliding a slice between his teeth. “…game thingies.”

“Game thingies?” You tilt your head back and use the utensil to encourage the goo in the jar to blorp into your mouth; you swish it around for a long moment before you dissolve-swallow with a lusty sigh.

“mmhmm. mk took up under paps a while back, learned how ta put puzzles together but does em so humans can take em home. they got a real knack for it.”

‘Took up’ usually means the kind of apprenticeships monsters have instead of institutional training, or at least the way they used to do underground. The same phrase is used for children who follow a particular adult around that they admire; the only difference is context. Now they’re just as likely to go through Ebott University as learn under a mentor.

“Wait… are you saying MK makes projected games?”

“yup.” Sans slides another ambiguous slice between his teeth, tilts his chin up so it dissolves out in his mouth. “got a buncha human money for one of em, though ‘m not sure they still have any of it. uh. that one about squares and snakes or something? the kids play it all the time.”

The butterknife rattles against the glass as you let go of it.

“ _MK_ made _Tubes and Cubes_???

“mm?” Sans looks up at you sleepily, but the points in his sockets drop to linger wistfully on the jar. You push it at him and he tosses the packet of slices back in the fridge to take it from you, already grasping the butterknife with a little clickity noise to scoop out a generous portion and slide it into his narrow little mouth. “yeah, I think that’s what it’s called. even paps plays that one when he gets in one of his moods.”

“I guess being a secret genius runs in the family.” You cross your arms, feeling vaguely annoyed that you didn’t know about this, although it’s definitely one of those things monsters would never think of telling you. Something everyone knows, and no one needs to say. Bleh.

“guess so.” Sans grins as you finish up, then closes the door of the fridge with his broad hip. “s’what mk n shonda talk about a lot since she started writing those, uh. visual thingies?”

You both head to the sink to wash hands; you also wash the knife and put it in the dish drainer. You’d already eaten with Alphys, so the fridge visit was mostly impulse and indulgence. Hence the coveting of the jar, although you’re glad Sans ate the other thing, too. He always eats less than you do, and probably needs it more.

“Viewbooks?” you ask, and he nods as you head upstairs to the bedroom together.

“mmhmm. mk helps her sync up the doodly-thing with the story and uh, pictures.” You snort absently as you flop gently back onto the bed. The _doodly-thing_. He probably means the cling particle matrices that allow a user to control it regardless of hand shape, or hand existence. MK uses their tail to play.

You wiggle your way under the covers with boxers and t-shirt still on, but Sans sheds everything except his socks before crawling into bed. You notice but try not to make it obvious; leaving the socks on is often a subtle signal that he might be interested in fooling around a bit before sleep. Sans’s barebones body slithers into your arms like a segmented little snake, his smooth exterior creating almost no friction against the blankets and sheets.

You arrange him until all his hard bits rest against you comfortably, but you can still feel the soft fullness of his magic in a few places, too; he seems awfully pleased to be arranged. Sans seems pleased anytime he gets what he wants without actually having to move to get it, and your soul feels warm thinking about how comforting it is that he can be so easy to please. You know what he likes, and you don’t have to always feel like you’re guessing. Not with that, at least. If he wants something he’ll ask, and if he’d rather be doing something else, he’d already be doing it. That’s a feeling that’s never gone anywhere during the course of your relationship, even with all the other changes.

You exhale, satisfied, and think about how having a kid together really hasn’t seemed to change Frisk and MK’s relationship at all the last few weeks, either. Frisk had held MK while Sariel was born with the same degree of attentiveness and care as they fed them waffles and whipped cream the first time you’d-

“Wait a second,” you say in a voice that makes Sans lean back to look at you carefully. “Did Frisk _know_ Sariel was a skeleton before they were born?”

“nope,” he looks confused, a little alarmed by the change of subject.

“Why could they...did they know they’d be _able_ to pull the new soul?”

Sans is shaking his head, but he understands why you’re confused now. “that was for like, uh. tradition? remember? more for _show_ , cause mk wanted to do it waterfall style with a partner even though frisk’s human. mk was gonna be the one actually _doing_ it, but that’s why everyone flipped once we saw frisk could pull em for real.”

“Oh,” you say quietly. “I can’t see the difference.”

He shrugs.

“How do they do it in Snowdin?”

“jus’ pull the new soul y’self. s’how grillbz did it; me n lola just kept him fed.”

You grin. “Well, it makes sense. He _did_ get himself pregnant in the first place.”

You both giggle about that for a minute.

“Mmm. Grillby can heal, can’t he? Even without his drinks?”

“yeah,” Sans answers sleepily, cuddles back into you with a soft sigh. “most monsters can heal humans easy, jus’ push a little magic in there and put the pieces back where they go.”

“Wow, is _that_ what it is?”

“mm? if you’re doing it that way, yeah. lotta monsters use fire magic, sticks things back together. tori n grillbz do...vulkin. but paps uses his…” A skeletal hand does a little twirl; you give him a pained expression.

“That gesture is not as explain-y as you think it is.”

“y’know…he knows where it goes. uses his hp if it needs the help.”

“Ohhhh,” you say quietly, rubbing his humerus. “That’s why he has to eat. To put it back.”

“mm.”

“Why can’t _you_ heal?”

“mm?” You glance down to try and see his expression; he frowns a little, then shrugs. “can’t do how he does, an’ ’m too little for the hp trick.”

“Can you do the whole pushing magic into bodies thing, though?”

Now he looks truly baffled.

“course i can,” he says after a minute. “happens all the time when we get close.”

Your mouth opens, but nothing comes out. You try again, and this time it works.

“Can you show me?” you ask, since that’s usually easier than having him explain. Iridescence seethes lightly across his skull, and he smiles sheepishly.

“can’t just do it on command,” he admits with a little giggle. “gotta be worked up first. but...” He shakes his head, the baffled look coming back. “you feel it, though. i know ya do…it’s, uh…” He makes his little throat-clearing noise. “feels… warm? on here,” he says, then touches the tiny tips of his fingers to his teeth lightly. “when i breathe, too…sometimes when i fuck you, touch you inside?” He wiggles his phalanges suggestively to make you smile. “i can feel it when we put our souls together…” His face softens; he means he can feel himself with your body when your souls are merged. “feels _warm_ to you when i get excited. that’s _me_ you’re feeling. like, uh… my body’s telling you it’s ready in a way your body understands. way it _likes_.”

He smiles, inordinately satisfied with his own explanation. Or maybe he’s just pleased that his body’s so goddamn chatty, who the fuck knows. You decide to consider what he’s said instead of complaining about it. You think all the way back to when you realized your relationship with Sans was a potentially sexual one, the time when you’d told him his eyes reminded you of stars. How you remember thinking very specifically:

_You’ve never noticed his bones having any particular temperature before, but right now they feel warm._

And when you’d kept on telling him exactly how and why his eyes are beautiful to you, describing the way they make you feel… that’s when he’d gotten so ‘worked up’ you’d felt his soul surging against your chest where you’d been holding each other close.

Sans’s bones feel warm to you when he’s turned on, and you never wondered why. Hell, you’ve used his relative temperature to evaluate his arousal or lack thereof plenty of times. You just took it for granted that _warm_ is something that implies ‘sexually receptive’ to you on an instinctual level, and never once considered that there’s no logical reason you can think of that his body would work that way.

You’ve been together more than three years.

“We’ve been together more than three years,” you say in defeat. “We’ve literally merged our souls together; we invented some kind of soul promise thingie, we...I swear I’m just going to walk into the ocean. I give up. How the hell do I not know these things??”

He’s laughing, but it’s not at you. “you’re acting like you’re the only one?” He sighs it out, then makes an expression of affected patheticness.

“i raised the kiddo for eleven years, fucked my way through a small army a humans, then turned around and asked you why your _blood was_ _wiggling_ first time we got real close,” he points out deadpan. “you really gonna let me live _that_ down?”

You snort helplessly, then rub your face on his skull as you giggle together. He flops around so he can hold you back more effectively, then leans up on an elbow so he can smile at you, look at your expression. What he sees there makes him soften, hard fingers petting your face with a heavy, satisfied sigh. The smooth points of his fingertips work their way through your hair against your scalp, massaging and soothing until you shiver all over the way he likes.

“thought i was done for good, now here i am writing papers bout it again.” His low rumble vibrates soothingly against you; he bonks his frontal bone on your forehead affectionately. “getting better at explaining it now.” He lets out an amused little huff. “guess it makes sense, since the sex is a lot better, too.”

You both laugh at that since it’s kind of an understatement, and then get quiet while you think about it some more, petting each other idly. In the last year or so he’s published several more papers about human-monster sexuality, something he hadn’t done since the one you’d read all those years ago. The one you’d thought about the first time you’d met him, the rebuttal to Duncan’s heart symbolism paper you’d figured out he wrote the morning after the first time he showed you his soul.

You bring it up now, remembering a few key points he’s certainly changed his opinion on since; although he’s mentioned it before, he hasn’t ever gone into the details.

This time he tells you the whole story, which also turns out to be the story of how he’d ended up trying sex with humans at all in the first place.

He’s Sans, so of _course_ he’d done it in the name of science. Duncan had put in a request through MAHI-MSTEM, the system that later gave rise the University you work at for interview participants on monster sexuality. Alphys had told Sans about it at work since those kinds of requests always go through her… and because she’s Alphys. He’d ended up volunteering because he was too curious not to; Alphys had volunteered as well. Because she’s Alphys.

Alphys _hadn’t_ fucked the interviewer like Sans ended up doing, though.

He’d initially tried sex with Duncan on a whim because he thought it would probably be funny, and because she’d had the temerity to simply ask him if he’s be willing to. It had been way before the two years of pathological masochism, when he was still staying with Toriel.

Turns out the paper had been vaguely creepy partly because she’s just a creepy person. Despite his ground rules and discussion of his ‘delicate’ body, she’d figured out very quickly that some of the ways she’d touched him had hurt despite what she’d thought was reasonable care. She just as quickly figured out that it turned him on when she hurt him. A lot.

The reason she caught on right away might have been because she was the same way; she got annoyed with him when he wouldn’t hurt her in return, although she acted like she was fine with it. In the end human genitalia isn’t terribly different than what some monsters have, and she’d been willing enough to let him please her with his trusty old phalanges as many times as she wanted. Which had apparently been a lot. In return, she’d been willing to rough him up a little. You can tell he’s ashamed of that part, doesn’t say much more about it.

He’d gone with her a few more times after that, but then he’d discovered that some of the things she asked him to do to her instead of causing physical pain made her feel humiliated or degraded, and that his appearance actually frightened her. He adds dryly that her mistake was letting him watch her face that time, of course. You can tell how much it had hurt his feelings that her attraction to him, if it could even be called that, had been based in aversion. How much it must have messed with his head to have done things to hurt someone without knowing what he was doing.

That someone would trick him into having sex when they didn’t even _like_ him, just to see if they could.

He’d felt betrayed, got angry and left. He didn’t go back to her until years later. When it got really bad, and he’d found himself doing more or less the same thing to other humans. If they asked him if it hurt he wouldn’t lie, but he didn’t offer the information. They grabbed first, asked how it felt later if they bothered at all. Most of them looked at him the same way Duncan had: fear and disgust, the desire to violate or be violated by something they hated. He’d even hurt them back sometimes if he was feeling far gone enough, and as long as they didn’t cry or bleed.

By then Duncan had written that paper, and he’d gotten an inkling that she probably figured he felt the same about her as she did about him, and had no way to know it wasn’t true. Sex with a monster the way she’d done, for the reasons she had... it didn’t make her understand them any better. Reading it made Sans realize both that he didn’t understand humans any better either, and possibly that he was more like them than he had thought.

Even though the what she’d done and what she’d written about it had bothered him, Duncan still was willing to do what he wanted her to. He’d gone back to her near the end of his misadventures in human sexuality; his genitalia had come out when she hurt him, and she’d ended up becoming the second human he’d penetrated. The ‘uncomfortable’ one. Her fascinated and disturbingly medical reaction to what she called his ‘penis’ had made him feel weird, like he was some kind of experiment. Feeling like she didn’t see him as a person had sharpened his arousal; fucking her the way she asked him to had hurt him, and that had also turned him on.

You figured out a long time ago that many of the ways he’d described his experiences with humans early on in your relationship had been very softened descriptions, although you don’t think he ever flat out lied. Most of the human sex acts he shrugs off had been uncomfortable to painful; if he actually admits to discomfort, he usually means they were painful enough to force him to orgasm.

The way he describes it confuses you, but eventually you ask the right questions. Turns out he’d fucked both Duncan and the other partner in the ass, and the ways they’d asked him to do it had resulted in a great deal of chafing and discomfort. A lot of the surprise he’s expressed involving how soft your body feels to him makes a lot more sense after learning that.

“Can I ask you something?” you say after a long time of talking and cuddling. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“…shoot.”

“How is it possible they hurt you that much without killing you?”

He exhales shakily, but he rolls onto his back and raises his hands, tents his legs up. “partly cause they wanted to, and most of em didn’t wanna _kill_ me. not really,” he explains in a terse voice. “long as you don’t, uh. bust up my bones too much. in here,” he indicates his ribcage, “push em apart, doesn’t break anything, just moves em in a way they’re…not supposed to go.” He indicates his pelvis. “here, you put any kinda pressure on that, i’m gonna feel it.” He sighs out the terseness, just looks sad. “here… like this, here… in there, hurts even more,” he finishes, then flops on his side again to curl back up into your embrace.

Your mouth’s a little dry, because he’d just indicated quite a few of what you think of as his ‘sweet spots’. You’re sure he can feel your heart thudding in dismay, but he just holds you tighter and strokes your back calmly.

“Why doesn’t it hurt when I do it?”

You know it doesn’t; you’ve touched his soul. You’ve merged with him; you know _exactly_ how it feels.

He leans back and looks into your eyes for a long time, reaches up to cup your soft face in his hands. Strokes with his thumbs, hums a little in thought. Your soul feels warm; he gets like this when he wants to give as much thought to his answers as you do all the time. One of the ways you are that he admires.

“think it’s the same reason it feels good when i do stuff to you,” he says eventually, low and rumbly. “you said some things you didn’t like, some even hurt you when other people did it, remember? never really thought about it either, but i know we both…s’like we know each other?” You’re not sure how you’d say it either, but you know what he means. “took it for granted, but…when i touch you, and when you touch me, s’like...” That little crease appears between his sockets. “like we’re talking, too.”

You don’t get it, and he sees that. Smiles softly.

“you can feel the difference, and so can i,” he says, then takes your hand and puts it flat along his ribcage. “say you touch me like this,” he pulls your hand along perfunctorily, the complex bones of his hand moving yours in a specific way. “that’s jus’ regular, right? nothin to it. we both feel it, but it’s not…sexy?” His fixed grin dimples at the corners, sockets narrowing slightly. “but you touch me like _this_ ,” his hand moves your fingers to spread against him slowly, letting you really feel his smoothness; the way he manipulates the pressure is like a series of microscopic hold-and-release as you move along, now that you’re paying super close attention. A touch versus a _caress_.

“yeah,” he whispers, sockets ovalling happily. “you touch me like _that_ , lets me know you wanna mess around. get closer.”

“Is that why it felt good the first time I touched you here?” You touch the little bump where his second rib connects with his sternum. He shakes his head a tiny bit.

“that was ‘cause you were _callin_ ’ me,” he whispers soulfully. “remember? we just didn’t know it then.”

“Oh yeah,” you giggle self-consciously.

He pulls you close, traces your face his his nasal bone for a while. He touches you in patterns you eventually figure out are his impression of the way you touch him, but his hands are too smooth for it to really have the same impact. He doesn’t have skin, so there’s no drag or friction. His hands usually don’t get warm until they warm up on your body, so there must be places more susceptible to the whole…magic pushing thing?

You’re really all in your head about it; he probably knows, but he doesn’t seem less enthusiastic despite it.

Your chest feels all twingey-sad, and your mood’s a little off. Even after this much time together ( ~~so many times together~~ ), there’s still so much you don’t know ( ~~so much you forgot~~ ). Instead of making you feel warm inside like it usually does, like there’s always more to discover, thinking about it is making you feel oddly insecure.

“Do you love me?” you whisper, and you can feel his frown against your skin. That’s not the kind of thing you normally say to him. He pulls back and searches your eyes; the concern in his expression makes you blush as his hard, flexible palm cups your face and strokes you over and over.

“’course i do,” he whispers softly. “love you so much, okay?” A little crease appears between his sockets, then smooths out. The tips of his fingers glide against the soft cotton of your shirt, smooth-hard pressure like the polished ends of paintbrushes; you shudder under his careful, curious touch as his face softens enigmatically. “…hey. can i see you?”

You stare at his vertebrae, blushing even harder. “You don’t have to,” you say self-consciously, caressing his bare iliac crest with your thumb. He’s quiet, so you look up at his slightly incredulous, patient expression. Then you sigh it out.

“Sorry I’m being weird,” you add, but he just smiles and shakes his head. Stays still, like he’s...waiting.

Oh. He asked you a question, and none of the things you just said are an answer.

“yeah,” you agree quietly. “i’d like that.”

He makes a low, happy hum, pulls you closer with a sigh so he can rest his face against yours. He starts calling you, building slow and letting your tension fade naturally instead of convincing, taking his time. He nudges your forehead with his, then tilts up to let you feel the warmth of his teeth. The thing occurs to you at the same moment his heated breath brushes your lips in a huffed little laugh.

“there ya go,” he rumbles, pressing his fixed grin to the tip of your nose playfully. “feel it?”

You do, and you hum affirmatively as he brushes his teeth over your lips, too. Then he presses in slow like a kiss, and the warmth turns...penetrating. You hear a subvocal little catch, and his breath flows tight-shaky from his nasal aperture as he nudges in a little circle against you.

His arms slide around you to pull your bodies together. His hand slips between your shirt and shorts to press flat on your lower back, the other becomes a familiar guide at the nape of your neck as he slides his teeth along your jaw. Something about that heat makes you extra aware of the yearning your souls feel toward each other: the giddy little thrill and patient desire that combines into a feeling that’s just…him. Warm, glassy-smooth dentalium glides over your chin and back toward your lips. Your breath sucks in sharply as he presses firm and hot against your lips again, then his skull rolls down until his frontal bone rests against your forehead.

Your lids flutter open into timeless dark and impossible galaxies: his eyes.

“ _there_ you go,” he says again, a throaty whisper this time.

You try and say something, but a tiny moan comes out instead. He pulls back to look at you with an amused-satisfied exhale, you clear your throat and try again, feeling pretty worked up yourself. His fingers slide back to the front of your shirt, soothing and stimulating at once.

“Is it like coming in hot?” you pant softly.

He makes a negative little hum, still calling and caressing all over the front of your body. “that’s shed. can’t really control it. this’s...mmmh. little more on purpose, though i don’t hafta try. just happens, and it feels good. i can make it stop most a the time, but s’like…it’s cause i want you to feel me.” His voice gets rough at the end, the texture in it drawing a delicious shiver out of you. It drops to a sultry whisper as he slides a femur up and over your hip, hooks his leg to slide his whole body closer.

“cause i want you to _know_ that i do. want you to come out for me, let me make you feel good.” His pelvis curls in towards you too, and he presses his teeth slow and smooth along your jaw. _Maddeningly_ slow; really letting you feel how _warm_ he is for you, how _ready_. He rubs his face in your neck the way you like as his voice drops to a husky whisper; it occurs to you that this penetrating warmth is a big part of _why_ you like it so much. Ohhhh fuck.

“wanna _touch_ you, darlin’…push what i got right inside. want you to _feel_ me.” He leans up to nuzzle your face warmly, lets out a ragged little breath with a rounded hint of the whisper still in it. “you gonna let me?”

“Yeah,” you whimper; he moans quietly in response and slides his palm up and down on your chest, makes a small noise as his breath shudders out hard. His forehead and crotch push against you as his middle arches back slightly, curving like a drawn bow to make room as he exposes your soul. He whines softly with what he sees there, and you watch it together. Love and fear, longing and weariness, intimacy and care. Insecurities that boil away like vapor as soon as his fingers slide in, making you both exhale shakily. He gives you the wordless expression of his love, gives you pleasure and calm.

Sans shuffles his patient, meandering path through the house you’re building together, keeps going all the way through and towards your wings. Gives you a little tour of yourself the way he sees you, points out his favorite landmarks with a fond little tap, a playful nudge, a lingering caress.

You’ve always paid such close attention to how he is. He makes you feel it: see how _good_ to him you are? You don’t ask _why_ his body does what it does, you ask him if he _likes_ it, what it means, if he wants you. Like a monster would, since all of their bodies are so different from each other; you never take his pleasure for granted.

You let him in, let him know how you felt the first time you noticed his body’s responses. His sexual receptiveness your body translates as ‘warmth’; the sexual assertion of his soul translated as a giddy, magnetic surge against your chest. It probably reminded you of the drinks you’d had with him because the drink _was_ him, and you’d responded in kind before you knew what it meant, before he even realized what was happening to him. You groan softly as he fills you with it: the depth of his trust in you that allowed him to become so aroused without even thinking about it. The cuddles and compliments and closeness and talking, exactly how he likes to feel. You’d seduced him so sweetly, so completely he never even saw it coming.

He lets out an amused exhale; it turns into a shaky groan as you let him know just how much you’d wanted to see his soul that first time, what you would have done if you’d known you could call him then.

“will you do it now?” he breathes shakily once he stops shivering. Of course you will. You start just the way he likes, thinking about how beautiful he is to you, how much you want to see him, how much you want to touch him. He lets that flow right back into you: the thrill of being so wanted, the pleasure of your own call. You pull him out and he gives you that too, along with his lovely voice crying out with longing and fulfillment.

You feel what he wants now and you let him know it’s good, it’s okay. It’s something you can’t feel, but he rolls up and over to straddle you so you can share yourselves even more deeply.

He pants softly and lets out a faint sound of excitement, then slides your souls into each other so you can feel this with his body. Your hands move away to cup his pelvis between them, thumbs stroking his iliac crests encouragingly. His whine of anticipation emerges from your throat, and he lets out an astonished cry of gratification as he pulls the key he made out of your joined souls.

He wants to let you feel the different ways his magic becomes not-him, and this is another way he pushes it out.

His thumb rubs the silver surface over and over, intensifying its resonance with his body as his other hand touches your souls. He lets the moment linger and stretch as he touches both, because the key’s part of his body, too. That’s what he’d done to it, this is how he makes it. That’s how it works the way it does, and why it can go where it goes.

Just like he walks around with a little of his body in his soul almost all the time, this lets you do the same. You moan helplessly and hold his pelvis tight as the concept washes through you. His breath shudders in and out of him, rippling with the physical substance of his pleasure coursing through his magic. It’s something you have no context for, but the overwhelming eroticism it brings up in him ( _he’s_ always _inside you_ ), the way it makes his body feel when he _thinks_ about it rushes in sharp-sweet like it’s yours.

Sans lets out a cracked moan and rubs the key some more; it shines even brighter as he lets you feel him push his magic into it, polished insistently with his intent. He can’t heal, but he can do this. You feel even more space collapse down into itself, feel it becoming more real, more present.

You shiver uncontrollably with his ecstasy as he _becomes_.

What he’s doing isn’t inherently sexual, but _sharing_ it with you like this…every breath sobs into his skull, and each exhale whimpers its way out of him; he _can’t_ stay quiet, so he stops trying. His magic sheds out to mist all of his bones with intoxicating iridescence, wells up freely at his pubic symphysis to slide along his ischium and ramus, all the way down his widespread femurs to where his knees touch the bed.

The key is a piece of him, and it can take you wherever you need to go.

You touch his shed magic with shaking fingers, bring them to your mouth so he can taste his soul with the space between your body.

_Anywhere at all._

Sans closes his sockets and lets out a clear, sweet cry of completion as he _pushes_ the key back inside your soul while it’s also a part of his. The sensation of everything he is, everything he wants you to be together, and every last bit of the promises you’ve made folds into itself, dimensions compressing until it’s a blindingly silver-bright point of infinity… then he’s huffing and moaning breathily, coaxing your souls apart again. You both shiver with the soothing pleasure of separating, a goodbye kiss frictionless and slick.

“…holy shit,” he wheezes softly, trying to focus his eyes and catch his breath. He does, then uses his leg hooked around you as ballast to flop over in his side in a controlled _whump_ , bringing you along with him. You bring your hands back up to give them over to his steadier ones, and you exhale in unison as your fingers touch your separated souls at the same time.

He concentrates on the way it feels to get turned on the way he does, the ‘warm’ feeling his magic gets when he wants you to feel him like this. A hint comes through of why touching as much as he likes to is considered kinky by some monsters. It’s a kind of pushed magic somewhere it wouldn’t usually go, although this is still different than when he pushes magic into your mouths to taste. He feels a pulse of humor in you; you let him in easily since he’s curious. It’s funny to you that by his cultural standards it’s kinkier to touch than it is to taste, combined with a faint mental impression of him rubbing his aroused genitalia all over every inch of your body, the way he rubs the key.

Wow. That’s an interesting noise. Sans lets you in too, lets you feel how that concept’s just as funny to him as it is incredibly _sexy_. A tight, creaking exhale emerges as he presses his hot teeth against your neck, rubs in the way you like and lets you really _know_ what it is, why it feels so good to you. Why it feels good for him at the same time; the feeling of readiness, the warmth and liquidity of it reminds you a little of when your genitalia gets aroused.

Concentrating on where your bodies touch like this makes him discover something about himself, too. This is unexpectedly similar to how he feels when his genitalia comes out. And he notices because it’s currently in the process of doing exactly that, makes him notice the parallels. He keeps nudging his face into your neck, giving himself up to the sensation; he exhales hot and _pushes_ himself, lets you feel him deeper than skin.

Huh. The emergence of his genitalia and this kind of sensual touch are both events he can’t perform on command; he has to get worked up first, and then it just happens. The way it feels for him is kind of like the sensation your body and brain translate as “tingling” and “warmth”. He doesn’t have to _try_ … but he could probably make it stop if he wanted it to enough. Neither work at all when he’s too upset, doesn’t feel right, or just because his body’s decided it doesn’t feel like it. You already knew without knowing how; it’s why you won’t usually touch him sexually when he’s not warm at all, and you can’t taste any magic on his bones.

Sans has a bad habit of asking for things he’s not ready for, feelings that are too much, touches that can hurt. He can’t entirely help it, because when he doesn’t feel right the place where there’s nothing echoes out a command, tells him _he wants it_ and it won’t shut up. He can’t tell the difference between that and how he usually feels, because there isn’t one.

They’re both him: one and two at the same time, right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing.

You have a bad habit of keeping things inside, acting like you don’t need things, pretending you’re fine when you’re not. So stiff until you melt for him, so serious until you’re hilarious. You have a hundred extraordinarily creative ways to punish yourself for existing, letting cold anger carve you out hollow until you’re so lonely you forget what closeness feels like.

You’re still you: eating your own hunger and convincing yourself the emptiness fills you.

Your love reminds him that balance is also a viable outcome along with annihilation. His love reminds you that there can be no fulfillment without a need. You trace your similarities and differences over and over until they feel as familiar as the inside of your own teeth to your tongue, as familiar as the pressure of his eyes inside his skull.

Not identical, just compatible.

You’re both ready, so Sans pushes his magic into your souls along with the tender glow of discovering something good, learning how you are together, and sharing that with you. He makes a whispering coo of desire as you relish the afterglow; whenever he does the key-thing you feel ridiculously satisfied for much longer than is entirely decent. He _loves_ that, pulls a few threads of it to push deep into himself with a shamelessly gratified exhale. You sigh and hum with the quivery-full delight that makes you feel like you’re claiming it for yourself every time you help each other feel this way, press your face against his to savor his penetrating warmth yet again.

These sensations enhance each other as well, like when he pushes in his mouth and his soul at once; in this case the heightened touching-pushing along with soul-pushing makes his genitalia finish emerging _very_ decisively. It’s a heated length that brushes your belly lightly when he pulls you close with his leg to give you both a brief thrill, giggling as it twitches and bobs gently under its own slight weight to seek your warm skin.

“… _fuck_ ,” he slur-whispers as soon as his fingers touch your sternums together. “thass some real mtt-brand _bone_ harden’r right there,” he adds enthusiastically, then huffs in slo-mo amusement at his own joke. You look down at his body and grin, but he just bends his ass out so it doesn’t poke you, then cuddles his upper body back into you with a satisfied sigh like he’s ready for naptime.

You’re not surprised that he doesn’t seem inclined to touch it himself, either; Sans can muster up a surprising amount of energy when you want to be touched, but is rarely willing to expend even a fraction of that to stimulate himself. He’s just that lazy, and he’s said he prefers to touch his soul for that on his own anyways.

You wouldn’t mind a little more intimacy, but… hmm. You’re menstruating, and with his fear of blood and the fact that it’s uncomfortable for you then anyways, it’s a nope for that sort of fucktimes…and you won’t use your mouth when he’s shaped like this. Although he seems perfectly happy to ignore it until it goes away (which he tends to do unless you seem interested in it), you find yourself drawn to suggest another option.

“Eey good-lookin’,” you mutter in a deeper tone than usual. His sockets open, eye lights wavering with lambent interest as he takes your expression.

“Wanna handjob?” you say throatily in your best impression of his voice.

He snorts, then his face changes when he sees that although it’s funny, you also mean it.

“…don’t have to,” he rumbles hesitantly, but once you give him the ultimate buttface of judgement for parroting your words back at you unintentionally, you giggle softly together.

“mm…kinda,” he admits breathily. “…yeah.”

“I was actually thinking of trying something,” you admit.

He gives you a lazy but enthusiastic smile. “gonna make it worth my while, huh?”

You just grin sharply and roll away, then flop back over holding a little bottle of sweet oil he uses to rub your shoulders on bad days and brandish it at him. “I was thinking of using this,” you inform him, leaning in close to watch the white points in his sockets dilate. His magic’s so smooth he doesn’t _need_ to be lubricated, and although your body eventually absorbs magic he sheds, it can make things slicker anyhow once he’s sufficiently excited. This is just for fun.

“It might get a little…sloppy.” It’s a conspiratorial whisper now. “Are you interested?”

The tops of his orbitals arch at you mildly, and he looks at the oil, his genitalia, and your hands. An unexpectedly deep shudder clacks down his spine from skull to sacrum.

“…apparently,” he says dryly in his best _your_ -voice impression, and you giggle together as you anoint your hands liberally. He has to reapply the cap for you since your hands are now too slippery to make it turn, and he’s much more used to having no surface traction on his fingers. You offer him your oily hands with a pleased, seductive smile; just because his genitalia looks vaguely like a human penis at the moment doesn’t mean it necessarily feels like one to him, or that it works like one either. His genitalia’s always made of the same magic regardless of shape, and you think it might be even more sensitive than what humans have. Any time you try something new or he’s significantly different than he has been for a while, you let or help him figure it out first.

You touch foreheads softly and gaze down at him together, and he makes a soft little noise of interest as he feels the novel slickness of your warm skin. He actually spends several minutes massaging and playing with your slippery fingers and ignoring himself, starting to breathe faster just from teasing thin phalanges along the little folds and crevices of your palm when he curls your fingers. Eventually he brings your hands along with his down to the shadowed length glistening with his cyan and yellow iridescence at the front of his pelvis. He sets the tip where your pinky rests against the heel of your loosely fisted hand, stroking the outside with his oiled bones.

“that okay?”

“Yeah,” you breathe eagerly, feeling a sharp flutter of excitement in your seething-full soul as he pushes hotly into the slickness you’ve created together, still caressing the outside of your hand with his pearly thumbs as he sucks his breath in and holds it, thrusting into your fist as he tightens your hold slightly, then again.

“…oh, fuck.” It’s a high, surprised whisper, and he immediately leans his upper body back to look at your face before pushing in again hesitantly, petting the inside of your wrist with the delicate fingertips of his other hand. Wow. You know that response; it feels so good he has to check and make sure you’re okay. You’ve felt it in him before, the tinge of anxiety trying to convince him that nothing could feel this good for him without taking it from someone else.

“I like it,” you reassure him quietly, let him see how true it is. “Is it good?”

“yeah,” he exhales, stroking the backs of your knuckles reverently as the points in his sockets expand massively. “feels like _you_.” He continues moving his genitalia in your hand instead of trying to move your hand up and down as he reaches for the other. He puts it on top where the tip emerges between your thumb and forefinger as he watches you carefully. He gasps again when he urges you to rub across as he pushes up into it, then weaves your fingers together and around your fist so he can stroke the proximal of his own thumb across when he pushes up again. The next time he moves your hand down so he can keep circling the tip himself as he pants and speeds up.

“oh, god,” he gasps, then his breath catches when he compresses your hand with his, sliding rapidly into the resistance. “think ‘m…shit, _fuck_!”

Sans shouts in dismay, sockets clenched shut and curling your fingers around hard to squeeze him as he tries to stay still. His breath hitches, then he lets out a defeated sob as he fucks into them frantically. The noise gets strangled, then chokes off completely as he clenches your fist around him even harder. He’s silent and grimacing tensely as his genitalia pulses between merely firm and rock-hard in your tight, slick grasp. His body curls in towards you, shuddering violently; he lets out a pained, nasal moan as he stills.

“Hey,” you say quietly, then exhale sadly he tilts his skull back to look at you. Embarrassment and distress flit over his features as he gazes at you unhappily through slitted sockets, breath huffing through the skewed space between his parted teeth.

Sans doesn’t always like to come. Especially not when it happens suddenly, when he isn’t expecting it, or when it feels too ‘sharp’. It makes him feel like his own body is something’s happening _to_ him, doing things without his permission. He likes it slow and deep, likes it to build up and let him _decide_. You can tell he even tried to stop it from happening and couldn’t, so he’s probably upset about that too. He hasn’t been shaped like this in a while, and he isn’t very often; there’s a reason something as simple as ‘handjob with lube’ isn’t something you and he have done before.

“Are you okay?” you ask even softer, and he glances away even as he nods. His thumbs are rubbing the outside of your hands again, like he’s trying to think of what to say, trying to reassure you. Otherwise he keeps your hands where they are, but another minutes passes in silence and you study him carefully. He’s aroused, disappointed, and not having a very good time. He feels…

Stuck.

“It was too sensitive, right?”

He nods, shivers and exhales slow, trying to steady his breathing. You know how he feels, like everything was good until this part, like he’s ‘ruining' it. But it won’t be officially ‘ruined' until it’s over; he doesn’t want it to be over, but he doesn’t know what to do from this point except feel increasingly ashamed and upset. Luckily, you do.

“Want to try again?” His eye lights fly back to your face, iridescence flits over his skull.

“sorry,” he says instead of answering.

You smile and shake your head, dismissing his ridiculous apology. You get the same way sometimes, and he always makes you feel better about it, too.

“Can I have a kiss?” His sockets widen and he nods; his teeth are warm when you press your lips against them. When you lean back and lick them a brief peppercorn tingle ghosts across your tongue.

“I just feel like we can do better,” you smile softly, letting him get a good look at how much you mean it. “Do you want to give it another try?”

“yeah?” He looks oddly young sometimes, just like he seems to wear his thousands of years like a millstone at others. One of his hands loosens, then leaves yours to seek your shoulder. He’s not stuck anymore.

“Yeah.”

“will you do it?” he asks quietly. “don’t wanna get carried away.” He glances away again, and you can tell that’s what he thinks happened just then.

“I’d really like that,” you tell him honestly. “Show me how, okay?”

Sans leaves a hand on yours, the other firms its hold your shoulder as he leans in close to your face. He moves with a soft exhale of pleasure, showing you what feels good to him right now. Indicating that the tip is sensitive, and exactly how far up to stroke before it’s too much; shows you where to brush lightly, and only sometimes. Then he lets your hand go with a lingering caress, and holds your other shoulder with his oily phalanges curling into your shirt.

“I love it when you let me do this,” you find yourself saying as he exhales with relief and longing, surrender and trust. His expression softens further with surprise as you keep going; you’re not usually all that talkative during sex. “It reminds me of the first time you let me touch your soul.” His breath hitches in, leaves him with a bit of his voice behind it.

You don’t know what’s got you both so nostalgic. Maybe it’s the oddly mournful tone of the anniversary thing tomorrow, or the fact that something’s putting you both in a weird mood. Maybe maybe it’s just the existential anxiety of knowing all those firsts might not be. Nothing like forgetting everything to make you hold on to the memories that survive with both hands as hard as you can, make you cherish each new one you create together. Tracing the patterns of your love over and over, getting fonder with familiarity.

“y-yeah?” he whispers, and his breath shudders out slow as you add a little twist to your hand movements.

“When you let me know how much you wanted to touch me, just like I’m touching you right now” you add, getting caught up in the memory, caught up in how full of him you feel. Satisfied, lazy. Taking your time, making him feel good. “This feels like...I can show you how happy you make me.” You feel your eyes crinkle in amusement; his phalanges trace an absent-minded cuss on your shoulder with one hand, a profession of love on the nape of your neck with the other. He doesn’t notice he’s doing either, utterly transfixed by your words.

“I don’t say it enough,” you whisper, feeling his hot breath panting out soft against your face. “I know I can make you feel it. I can...let you know. But it’s not the same as telling you.”

His phalanges tighten on your shoulders and he lets out a soft whine. He can’t bear to interrupt, and he also wants desperately to say it too, even though he already is. You keep going.

“I’d love you even if we never did this.” You let him see how true it is. “I’d love you even if you hadn’t showed me your soul, even if you never wanted to.” You suck in air, not noticing how unsteady your breathing is. “Talking with you, being lazy together. Feeling okay and doing a whole lot of nothing anyways. _Deciding_ to,” you breathe, feeling like you’re dissolving in the changing texture of his eyes, the feel of his hard body against yours, the fervent hum of his tingling resonance gliding slick through your fingers.

“I just want to be with you, however we like the most,” you whisper hoarsely. “More of the same, always.”

You bring your face closer until you can press in to feel his penetrating warmth with your cheek, and you hear his soft whimper under your own ragged panting. “Yeah,” you whisper, utterly lost in him, “just like this. Always.”

You realize you’ve been rubbing off against his femur about ten seconds before you’re coming in your boxers with a broken little grunt, listening to his breathless murmurs of encouragement as the bright peaks of pleasure roll through you. He looks astounded and oddly grateful, the way he always does when he watches you come. Your touches get sloppily enthusiastic for an orgasmic minute or so, then control comes back twice as insistent as he groans helplessly.

“Fuck.” You try to to catch your breath, circling your thumb softly on the underside of his genitalia.

Sans moans and pulls at the fabric of your shirt, pelvis tilting forward hungrily again.

“please…” he whispers, “’s jus’, i need…”

“More?” He nods breathlessly, and you reach around him, glide your palm over his ischium. The fingers of your other hand explore up and under, indicating the permeable space that sometimes remains in his pelvis when he’s shaped like this. “Want me to touch you in here?”

“ _yeah_ ,” he grunts tightly, legs trembling apart a tiny bit as he presents his pelvis to be carefully penetrated. He lets out a shivery hum as your hand caresses into his pelvic outlet, the innocent little curl of his tailbone sliding against the back of your hand as you fill him behind the resistance of his distended magic. You brace your oily wrist on your leg as you both wiggle closer, his femur still between your thighs and the other hooked up over your hip to keep you close, give him the leverage to move how he likes. His sockets narrow, then clench shut in concentration after a few minutes, and his bones start to tense up again. A microexpression glances across his face; he’s getting frustrated.

“Hey. You don’t have to come or anything, okay?” you whisper. He shudders hard, a faint clack traveling all the way down his spine until you can feel it in his sacrum, a little quiver against the back of your hand. “Do you want me to stop for a minute?”

He huffs softly through his teeth a second, then nods. You stop moving your hands, although you keep them where they are. Magic beads up in the inner corners of his sockets, slides down into to the pillow even though they’re still shut. He’s needed these little breaks once in a while ever since The Thing happened. You can tell it’s partly because he likes to prove to himself he can stop if he wants to, but it also has the effect of making him progressively more turned on the longer he waits. His genitalia gets hotter, quivering in your hand and under your fingers as his breathing deepens. Getting rougher now as you feel the tiny adjustments he makes, savoring your touch.

“I’m not in a hurry, Sans,” you whisper, nudging your forehead against his idly. “I’m not going anywhere because I’m right where I want to be, okay? Making you feel just how you want to…as long as we both want.” You exhale so soft you can hear your own smile in it. “We could go to sleep just like this…”

He sighs out the last of the tension, even his fingers letting your shirt go as his arms slide up and around to pull you close. He tucks his face slightly underneath yours and shivers.

“’m good,” he whispers, moves his hips suggestively. “that okay?” You hum agreement and he keeps moving; you pick up the pace as he hugs you close. “’m gonna go again,” he adds, then lets out a more vocal sigh when you put steady pressure inside his pelvis. Smooth bone fingertips slide up into your hair against your scalp, rubbing in patterns that start to echo they way you touch him inside.

Instead of tensing up, the waves of his shivering gets closer together until it doesn’t stop at all. He makes a nasal little hitching sound as his pleasure breaks open, bones going loose for a long few seconds until a single, hard spasm shakes him, followed by another.

You circle your fingers inside him, spreading wide like you do in his soul but pushing firmly against the surprisingly hard solidity you feel rippling through his magic, pulsing and quivering. His neck cranes back and his sockets open, the texture of his eyes shifting wildly as he tries to focus in on you and fails; a deep, vocal purr gushes out hot against your lips.

Your other hand coaxes the climax out of him, first two fingers out like scissors and last two curled around him at the base, thumb rubbing underneath insistent and gentle, leaving the tip untouched to keep the sensations deep and diffuse the way he likes. You can see how much he likes this; his sockets still don’t close, and you can feel the increasing looseness in his bones.

After a long time of drawing low, breathy noises out of him, his hands slide down your arms and retrieve your fingers from around his genitalia, from inside his body. The points in his sockets focus in on your face as he brings your extraordinarily moisturized hands to his teeth and nuzzles them gently. He sighs like he can taste them, lets his sockets drift closed again.

“You all good?” you ask anyways. He nods and strokes your hands with his thumbs some more.

“yeah,” he whispers. “better’n good. feels…” he exhales, and the expression on his face looks so peaceful it makes you twinge inside, makes you feel more… _aware_ of him. He pulls your arms around him and wiggles into you, pulling and sliding until your limbs are tangled together enough to please him.

“...safe,” you think you hear, but you might be dreaming.

You hum in wordless satisfaction, already drifting off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took extra long to post mostly because I was dithering over changing like seven sentences back and forth, and I couldn't decide where to do chapter cuts. I do not, will not, and have never known what I'm doing. This is just what comes out. The rest should be blorped out by the end of the week, and I want to hug everyone and cry.


	75. Events Unnerve Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This fic begins with a New Order song (Regret, 1993) and ends with a New Order song (Ceremony, 1981) as was intended; if it’s not clear New Order is Reader’s motif (Like Sans + The Smiths/Morrissey, Papyrus + Selena/80s girlpop, and Frisk + Motown/Jazz).  
> This is the last song, because this is the last chapter… of A Certain Tenderness.  
> ;)
> 
> This is why events unnerve me  
> Find it all a different story  
> Notice whom for wheels are turning  
> Turn again, and turn towards this time  
> All she asks is the strength to hold me  
> Then again the same old story  
> Word will travel oh so quickly  
> Travel fast and lean toward this time
> 
> I’ll break them all, no mercy shown  
> Heaven knows it’s got to be this time  
> Watching her, these things she said  
> The times she cried, too frail to wake this time
> 
> I'll break them down, no mercy shown  
> Heaven knows, it's got to be this time  
> Avenues all lined with trees  
> Picture me and then you start watching
> 
> Watching forever  
> Forever, watching love grow  
> Forever, letting me know.
> 
> New Order – Ceremony  
> https://youtu.be/hbgQOeKDcMw

When you wake up, Sans isn’t there. While it’s not as common as going to bed alone and waking up tangled in bones, it’s not exactly unprecedented. Especially when he’s in one of his moods. You sit up and rub your eyes blearily, groan as you lean over to shut the lamp off. You take your meds, drink some water, and read on your viewer until you feel a little more up to showering.

To your surprise, Angie and the kids are back by the time you’re showered, dressed, and head downstairs. You shoot the shit with her over some coffee, then eat the pancakes she decides to make since it’s a special occasion or whatever. She tells you Papyrus is back from being ‘Out’, and has offered a ride to the anniversary gathering, which is being held underground.

You yell an invitation to enter at the timely knock on the door; Papyrus strides in and tells you he’s back from being “Out”, and offers a ride to the anniversary gathering, which-

“I got that,” you interrupt amiably, and ameliorate your rudeness with a compliment. “You look very nice today.”

“YOU’RE WELCOME,” Papyrus agrees, offering narrowed sockets to remind you of his willingness to tolerate your eccentricities. He’s wearing a decidedly summery outfit despite the season, cutoff shorts and a crop top baring a great deal of the midnight-blue undergarment encasing his elongated bones.

You let your mind wander under the tide of mundane family chatter as you and Ange, the kids and Papyrus pile into his car. You let Angie ride shotgun since you’re not in the mood to absorb anything, content to be buoyed along and just enjoy being bundles up against the chilly wind whipping around the convertible. Of course it’d be too much to expect Papyrus to put up the roof as a concession. The kids have been bundled up against it since your sister almost certainly foresaw this circumstance.

Papyrus gets almost all the way to Mt Ebott before parking near one of the guarded elevators that lead underground, offroad in a spot no one would think to look unless they already knew where it is. You also have a funny feeling that having Papyrus take you here has a lot to do with you actually being here instead of ending up…somewhere else.

The proceedings take place outdoors, or what passes for that underground, in the vicinity of New Home. It’s a very strange sort of place, all the buildings seeming monochromatic and lifeless, contrasting with the vibrance of the monsters just kind of sitting or standing around. Angie and the kids split off after a few blocks, since Nattie apparently saw someone they know and wants to say hello. Papyrus chatters here and there, but you mostly let it wash over you as you take in the sights, since you haven’t really spent much time here and a lot of it’s new to you. Sans has given you a few tours at this point, including one of Snowdin, but he doesn’t really care for being underground much. You suppose if you’d spent as long there as he had, you might not care to come back all that often, either. You assume that’s also why he’s not here right now.

As you pass by one of the windows of a building, you notice a silvery glow out of the corner of your eye. When you follow it, you realize with a start that only one kind of thing makes that exact shade of luminescence. Papyrus’s sockets angle at you sharply when you can’t entirely suppress an awkward squawk as you hurry to catch up to him, realizing that there are monsters sharing souls in some of those buildings. Or at least that one.

Sans has told you and you’ve certainly picked up on the fact that monsters exposing their souls is definitely a private thing, at least in the viewing sense. But during holidays or at certain types of gatherings, it’s also apparently a common thing to do so out of sight, but close enough that other monsters are _aware_ of it in that way he’d shown you. You might not exactly be fluent in every little nuance of monster cultures, but you’re pretty damn sure you just saw more than you’re supposed to.

Papyrus glances over his shoulder at you. It’s one of his Looks.

“Sorry,” you say quietly. “I, um. We’re not supposed to be able to _see_ them, right?” You incline your head meaningfully at the building despite the heat in your face, and Papyrus turns a rather brilliant shade of pink-orange.

“OH MY GOD,” he says, making a parted-teeth moue of chagrin. “I…I’LL HAVE A WORD WITH THE COORDINATOR,” he says, an unaccustomed tightness in his usually strident voice.

As you walk, you take in the less obtrusive sights as your face cools, and Papyrus pulls out his phone to send a few messages. Every once in a while you’ll see a monster with a bunch of others gathered around, either telling a story or doing some type of structured recitation in languages you don’t know. Some of them you’re pretty sure you’ve never even heard before, and they seem to incorporate a lot of noises you don’t think humans are capable of making.

Eventually you come to a little town square/courtyard/strip mall looking area, with elevated flowerbeds holding some kind of plant you don’t recognize. Undyne, Frisk, and Toriel are there, and it looks like Angie and the kids caught up with them before you did. You wave as you and Papyrus approach.

“DID YOU GET MY MESSAGES?” Papyrus complains fervently as soon as Undyne is within yelling distance. “I-” Undyne just throws her head back and starts laughing uproariously.

“Um, yeah?? I guess Punk Hamster’s so glad to be back in town he forgot what _curtains_ are for?”

Papyrus’s sockets narrow with distaste.

“…EH. OF COURSE. IT WOULD BE _HIM_.”

That’s pretty much as far as the conversation gets before it starts to involve headlocks and playful shoving, so you decide to go over and sit with Frisk and Sariel for a while, since it’s been a few days since you’ve seen them. You observe that babies are still tiny, and the observation makes you have an emotion.

Frisk nods amiably in greeting, looking a bit puffy around the eyes.

“Did Sari learn how to sleep yet?” you ask hopefully, and Frisk shakes their head with a surprisingly low amount of ruefulness.

“No,” they gesture one-handed. “I’m thinking I need to recruit Sans for that.” It makes you grin.

Sariel’s dressed in an all-one-piece type of clothing that Sans has told you is common for babies around Snowdin. There are stripes so fine that at first glance they seem like a lighter or darker color; older children wear fatter stripes. You had wondered aloud if all skeleton babies are this quiet and serious in the first week they’d existed; Sans had been nearby and almost fell on the floor laughing, and you’d remembered some of what he’d said about his brother as a babybones and started laughing too.

“Speaking of Sans, have you seen him today?” They shake their head again. “He doesn’t like it down here, does he?”

Frisk sighs. “I don’t either,” they comment shortly.

“Why?”

Their face gets that closed look, but they glance at you surreptitiously and sigh.

“Sometimes things happen down here that don’t happen up there,” they sign close to their chest. You glance over at your sister and Toriel, standing close together and having what looks like a fairly private conversation. Nattie and Shonda are over by the nearest reciter, sharing a big bag of something edible with a dour-looking manticore while they listen. Papyrus and Undyne are wrestling, then-oh. Okay, now they’re in an encounter between two of the grey buildings.

You look back at Frisk.

“Like what?” you ask.

Just when you think they’re not going to answer, they flick their fingers close to their body once again.

“People that don’t exist anymore. They show up. Say things.”

“What kind of things?”

Frisk’s irises glitter at your fingers, then gaze into the distance. “About _him_.”

There’s a cold, dry taste in your mouth. You don’t want to know.

You want to know.

You don’t.

Frisk is starting to look concerned, so you ask something else.

“You remembered me from before, didn’t you.”

Concern shifts to caution.

“When we first met,” you clarify. “You remembered me from some...some other time.”

Frisk just holds Sariel close, looks into the distance for a minute before looking back at you.

“When I told you I loved you, and we were...” You exhale shakily. “When you did that, the- the unhappening. You could tell somehow that I knew...this time, we’d make it. We’d get here. How did I know? How did you?”

There are still so many things they just won’t talk about. Not with you…maybe not with anyone.

“You were going to RESET. But you…” You exhale and give up, since the fact that you’re just fishing is blatantly obvious.

Instead you sit and try tempting Sariel with little scraps of paper; they only like the pink ones. Their tiny little fingerbones continue to fascinate, and you almost resent how normal everything feels.

You watch Frisk; they seem so soft when they look at Sariel. Protective and loving.

Happy.

“Do you feel like you owe us anything, Frisk?” you ask once they look up at you again. “Or are we still just a game you play?”

Frisk’s face gets hard, but in a different way than usual. Not closed. They hand you Sariel, and lift their hands to sign as you cuddle their delicate child carefully, so light they feel as if a stiff breeze could blow them out of your arms.

“This isn’t a game for me any more than it is for you.” They look grave. “It never was. No matter how your life happens…it’s still your life.”

You wish you didn’t know what they mean, but you do. They seem to see something in your expression that satisfied them, because they nod.

“My plan is to take-” their eyes flick toward their mother “-flowey’s advice. I’m going to live my life. I guess…I’m going to try and be a parent.” You see that determined look creep over their features, and for the first time there seems to be something almost wholesome about it. “I’m going to try and do what everyone...my family...have been trying to do for me. What they already did for me…I want to do for Sariel.”

Frisk’s posture softens with a sigh, and their usually cheerful demeanor comes back. They play with their child’s phalanges for a moment as you bounce the baby on your knee, and something else occurs to you.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you for a few years now,” you gesture slowly at Frisk, and their face flattens out in dismay. They visibly brace themself, so you go for it.

“Why did you tell me Grillby’s burgers are made from a plant the first time we went there?”

Frisk blinks so rapidly it’s like their black lashes are vibrating.

“What?”

“The _burgers_ ,” you emphasize. “At Grillby’s. They’re made of dirt, but you said…”

“What?” Their face crumples like a disillusioned child’s. Oh.

“ _Sans_ told you they were a plant,” you realize, sighing and rolling your eyes.

Frisk looks utterly betrayed.

“I’ve been eating _dirt_?”

You shake your head, grinning. Eventually they recover, you shoot the shit for a few more minutes, and Frisk looks around the square curiously.

“I’m going to go find MK.” They pat your knee, and stand. “They have a-” They cut off at your panicked look. “Do you want me to give Sari to Mom?”

You blush, nodding.

Frisk grins at you, takes their baby over to their mother who seems overjoyed by this turn of events, then departs to find their...well. Papyrus calls MK Frisk’s “datemate”. Maybe that’s close enough. You wander over to Ange before you stiffen up too much sitting on the planter, although Toriel’s taken Sari over to the kids and is talking to them. She seems awfully happy to be surrounded by children.

Angie is giving you a pointed look. “Go on, say whatever you’re thinking,” she says indulgently.

“I never really thought I’d see you in a relationship like this with a woman,” you admit. Her eyes dart at you self-consciously. “I mean, now that I see it, I get it,” you clarify quickly. “You’re both really into the mom thing, you both...I don’t know. She’s mostly got her shit together, she likes having a routine… She seems like she always knows what to do, and you like that.”

Your sister looks offended.

“Sorry? It’s...” you exhale. “I don’t think that’s a _bad_ thing,” you try. “You hate it when people are indecisive, like ‘eh, I dunno, whatever _you_ wanna do, honey’ kind of people,” you snerk, purposely invoking her ex to put her back in a more receptive mood. And yep, there she goes, ruffled feathers smoothened out. Check. Another way to say it occurs to you.

“It’s like… you don’t want someone making decisions _for_ you or anything, you just want someone willing to make and be responsible for their _own_ decisions,” you muse absently.

“Why didn’t you just say _that_?” Ange asks in a rather familiar way, and you cover your face.

“Because I’m as bad at explaining things as Sans is,” you reply wryly, rubbing your eyes a little before crossing your arms again.

Ange sighs. “It serves me right, considering all the stuff I said when you and Sans first got together.” She scratches her neck thoughtfully, maybe a little embarrassed. “I guess…I really thought gender mattered to you a lot more when it comes to the whole, um. Relationships.” She clears her throat.

“I mean, it matters,” you explain slowly. “Just…not the same way it does for a lot of people. It’s not like-” you bark a short little laugh, “-there’s no automatic disqualifications when it comes to gender.”

Your sister gives you a sly, sidelong glance.

“ _Do_ you have any ‘automatic disqualifications’?”

You snort, shake your head. “The closest thing might be...hmm. Sometimes people are just too tall for my tastes, I guess.”

“Are you for real?” You scowl at her. “But...” Her eyes dart to Toriel, then away. She clears her throat. “Grillby’s tall, though.”

Your face gets hot. Yeesh. You really need to get around to experiencing some of the stuff that’s happened in the last few months. “Five feet eleven inches,” you mumble under your breath. “Less, sometimes. He’s not exactly...mm. Solid?” you try, although he is. Er, he can be. Whatever. You shrug. “It’s not like we can touch each other anyhow, so it might not-”

“ _What_?”

“Could you speak up, sis? I don’t think they heard you on the moon.”

She’s giving you a look like you’re the one flipping out. “What do you, I mean, how do you...you can’t _touch_?”

“He’s literally made of fire.”

You widen your eyes at her until she wilts. Then you have mercy on her and grin. “Souls aren’t flammable, sis.” You blow a long raspberry, then wipe your lips. “Anyhow. I have to say this is not my favorite monster holiday.”

“It’s kind of boring, yeah,” she whispers. “Don’t tell Tori I said that. She, um.”

“What?”

“She’s been kind of mopey? But she said this helps her get it out of her system or whatever.”

“Yeah, I hope so. It’s really hard for me to read her.” You dart your eyes at Toriel’s back as she sways side to side. You assume she’s rocking Sariel, who has yet to fuss or laugh or do much of anything you’d consider emotive. Which is super weird for a baby, but you suppose being the first skeleton ever must be a lot of pressure.

As much as it’s been lovely having whatever the fuck this conversation is with your sister, you’re more than a little relieved when Papyrus comes to collect you to go with him to the recitation he wants to listen to. But first, he leads you to a long table overseen by Muffet, her sibilant suggestions following each person brave enough to approach her wares as they hurry away.

There are so many tiny cakes, each one individual and unique. Apparently there are rules about them, so you ask Papyrus to choose one for you. It has white icing with orange flowers all over it, but when you bite into it it’s not actually sweet. It tastes more like a light and faintly sour biscuit, buttery and fresh.

The person reciting is Mettaton. You and Papyrus find some floor space to sit on relatively near, although he’s got quite the crowd gathered for whatever this is. It appears to be some kind of story involving a heroic skeleton, a beautiful robot, and a, uh….oh. A bear trap. The story’s actually kind of gory and morbid, but that’s par for the course when it comes to the sort of things Mettaton (and Papyrus, when they ‘collaborate’) write. Mettaton’s in his box form, but a ticker of his words flows across the bottom of his display so you can follow it. The middle of the story is nicer than the beginning; lots of parties and sparkles and, um. Descriptions? A low soundtrack starts playing underneath Mettaton’s professional-sounding scratch-buzz voice once the zombies show up.

You blush when there’s a part about the skeleton and the human trading artworks of each other, partly because the human is kind of obviously supposed to be you, but significantly more amorous in their intentions towards both skeleton and robot. You roll your eyes at Mettaton, who pays no heed as he lovingly describes some kind of chainsaw woodcarving competition done in ballgowns that end up...yep, chainsawed off, revealing many a heaving...bosom?

“None of us have bosoms,” you muse out loud, frowning.

“NONSENSE,” the world’s tallest living skeleton chides without looking away from the sexily hollering rectangle. “ _EVERYONE_ HERE IS A BOSOM??? COMPANION.”

You snort helplessly. “Have you ever thought about doing standup like Sans?”

Papyrus gets orangey-pink, with a midnight sheen appearing around the black points in his sockets.

“EVERYONE KNOWS I SPECIALIZE IN DRAMA,” Papyrus yells, angling his sockets down at you modestly.

You smile up at Papyrus, remembering/experiencing.

_Almost everything Papyrus says can be taken a lot of different ways, after all, when they aren’t complete non sequiturs. Or...maybe he always says exactly what he means, and everyone else is just projecting their own interpretations on...uh…._

“THINKING TOO HARD WILL GIVE YOU A HEADACHE, YOU KNOW,” he says in a rounded stage whisper, but his grin is sweet and surprisingly vulnerable. You know why he’s like this now, and you love him a lot.

“I love you a lot,” you say with a vulnerable grin of your own.

“YOU’RE WELCOME,” he replies, wrapping his undergarment-muffled bone arms around you awkwardly.

Then he carefully drags you into his lap and sets his bony chin on the top of your head with a sigh.

He’s so careful so much of the time but he still lets this part of himself show, even though he knows it puts people off. He’s full of himself and kind of arrogant. He has a tendency to get bored quickly when the conversation drifts to things he doesn’t care about, and he can’t hide it very well. He’s not always the best with boundaries, and he comes off as rude when he thinks he’s helping or just being truthful. Even when he tries his hardest, he still fails sometimes…but he wants people to know that, too. He’s bossy and complain-y and honestly kind of grabby with people; he’s critical and sort of bitchy, and he makes sure people know it.

He hopes people will want to get to know him the hard way because it’s not easy for him either; nothing ever is. To know him for who he is, not some lie he made up to make people like him. Even if it’s tempting sometimes, he holds himself to a higher standard than that.

Papyrus wants to be loved on his own terms, for who he really is, and for the reasons he thinks he should be.

You can relate.

“ARE YOU HAVING CONFUSING THOUGHTS ABOUT MY IRREPRESSIBLY ATTRACTIVE THORACIC VERTEBRAE AGAIN?”

You snort. “Probably.”

He sighs dramatically. “IT WAS INEVITABLE THAT OUR TORRID AFFAIR WOULD TEAR THIS FAMILY APART,” he intones with solemn glee, petting your arm idly. “OH, THAT REMINDS ME. WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO ON A EXTREMELY PUBLIC DATE WITH ME LATER THIS WEEK? METTATON AND I ARE HAVING A MESSY POST-DIVORCE ACRIMONY-FOR-ALIMONY TELETHON, AND HE’S BEEN AHEAD BY 7 SCANDAL POINTS EVER SINCE HE WAS SEEN LICKING MY MOTHER’S SOCKS ON A PADDLEBOAT THIS PAST TUESDAY.”

“You don’t have a mother, Papyrus,” you point out reasonably enough.

“TORIEL MIGHT NOT BE MY REAL MOTHER, BUT THAT’S ONLY BECAUSE I FOUND OUT METTATON WAS MY REAL MOTHER IN THE HALF HOUR WEEKEND SPECIAL,” he sighs regretfully. “THAT WHY IT WAS SEVEN POINTS INSTEAD OF THE USUAL FIVE.”

You consider that carefully.

“I’ll go on the date, but no petting below the waist and I’m wearing my own clothes.”

“YOU DRIVE A HARD BARGAIN, BUT I EXPECT NO LESS FROM MY BROTHER’S INFAMOUS HUMAN LOVER WITH WHOM I WILL SOON BE SEEN INDULGING IN AN OBSCURE SEXUAL FETISH I HAVE YET TO INVENT ON THE ROOF OF GRILLBY’S.”

You decide to skip the other stages of grief and head straight for acceptance.

“The pact is sealed,” you intone with surprisingly little regret.

“I WONDER WHERE THE LAZYBONES GOT TO,” he caws absently after a little while of petting and holding you like a child with a stuffed animal.

“He’s been gone since I woke up,” you admit.

“HE WOULD,” Papyrus says, and declines to further comment.

“Maybe he’s setting up one of his more elaborate pranks,” you muse, enjoying the healthful resonance of Papyrus’s body. “You know…Sans can actually be a little mean sometimes,” you blather. “like… he told Frisk a bunch of bullshit when they were a kid, and apparently they still believe some of it. The burgers at Grillby’s, the whole middle finger secret handshake thing… And a lot of time he just likes to get a rise out of people, or he says backhanded stuff, insults…nothing terrible, just… he _implies_ stuff. But he never really does that to me? Or you really, although he plays his own version of jokes I guess...”

“NNNYES?” Papyrus sounds absolutely baffled by where you’re going with this.

“Why doesn’t he ever do that to me?”

“BECAUSE YOU CAN’T HANDLE CRITICISM,” he replies promptly enough that you feel a wave of heat take over your face. You sit up, stung, and give him a hurt look.

He stares back at you in helpless frustration long enough that you eventually realize, cover your face with your hands and start laughing quietly.

Good lord.

‘You can’t handle criticism’ is apparently harsher criticism than you can handle, and of course Papyrus is the only one willing to point that out to you in a way you can’t ignore.

“I deserved that,” you snort-mumble.

His face softens, orbitals tilting up and teeth parting a little. “WELL. I. I MEAN, THE MORE...YOU LOVE SOMEONE THE LESS YOU CAN, UM.” He looks like he’s searching for the least rude way to speak his mind, so you pat his humerus gently with preemptive forgiveness for whatever castigating insight he’s about to unleash upon you. “YOU DON’T CARE WHAT STRANGERS THINK OF YOU, BUT THE CLOSER YOU ARE TO SOMEONE THE HARDER YOU TAKE THEIR NEGATIVE…FEEDBACK?” he tries, and that's actually… Huh.

“Thank you, Papyrus,” you say quietly, and he looks surprised. Then he gets all iridescent again. You lean back into him, and after a moment his chin sets itself back on your scalp.

“IT’S MUTUAL,” he caws softly. “OH, HELLO SANS.

“…heya, bro. hey, good-lookin’.”

“I KNOW I AM BUT WHAT ARE YOUUUU,” Papyrus says in the same absent tone he uses when he’s watching his programs.

“Where have you been, starshine?” You feel a little puff of displaced air near your lower back as Sans presumably sits. Smells like bones. You heave a sigh, then let yourself lean back until you’re lying across two skeleton laps. Sans grins down at you calmly, then pets the top of your head a bit as he looks back to and narrows his sockets at Mettaton. The robot’s still going; you gave up paying attention a while ago.

“mm. here n there.”

“ARE YOU GIVING MY BROTHER PET NAMES? OHHH, HOW ABOUT...SUGAR BONES?”

“…heh. s’, uh. pretty saucy there, paps.” The underside of Sans’s mandible gets a little iridescent, but it passes.

“WELL, IT’S NOT AS IF IT’S TAKEN ALREADY.”

You continue lying there on both of them like an uncomfy pile of clothing and bones, although Sans always feels a little floofier because of his soft integral magic. Papyrus makes up for it with his healthy aura, though. No matter how awkward it is, if you’re near him you always end up getting up feeling better than before.

Eventually Mettaton finishes, and Papyrus rushes over to start some kind of large, fake argument with lots of gesturing. You assume it’s related to the divorce proceedings.

“Are you okay, Sans?” you ask quietly. “You don’t usually take off in the middle of the night. Or wake up early, or whatever you ended up doing.

His face looks just as sleepy and amiable as always, but his shoulders move around a little uncomfortably.

“fell asleep, but it was still there when i woke up.”

You have no idea what he’s talking about, but then...oh. You glance at his pelvis and his skull inclines ever-so-slightly as you and he shuffle towards the table of little cakes.

“had a-” His eye lights flicker. “…dunno. weird dream, i guess.”

You’re surprised Sans had a sleep disturbance without disturbing you. “Did it not wake me up?” You keep your tone light despite your concern.

He’s shaking his head. “not like those. not bad or good, jus’...weird.”

You raise your eyebrows at him pointedly, and his grin flattens at the edges slightly as iridescence ghosts across his zygomatic bones. “um,” he half-whispers, “it wouldn’t go away. so i, uh. went to my room to take care of it, couldn’t get back to sleep.” He exhales heavily; you give his back a little pet. “went down to our spot by the ocean.” He sighs heavily. “couldn’t really relax. still felt kinda weird, so i went back n spent a while looking over that folder you asked me to, uh. proofread.”

You have no idea what he’s talking about, until suddenly you do. A folder of materials you’d planned to consider for another of your seminars, this one specifically on monster/human romantic and sexual relationships.

“I asked you to look at that folder eight months ago,” you say tersely, swallowing.

He just stares at you blankly, because of course he does.

“Um,” you try faintly. “I started using it for something else since then.”

“...oh. that, uh. makes a lot more sense, now that i...” He takes in your discomfort, then iridescence seethes across his skull. “you didn’t want me to to read that stuff.”

You clear your throat.

“It’s okay…more like, are _you_ okay?” It’s stuff he already knows, but...you probably wouldn’t put it that way if you’d known he was going to read it.

“yeah,” he replies, only a little hoarsely. He’s not lying. You’re about to ask another question when

 

something…

 

_happens_.

 

Sans staggers, eye lights guttering out. He grabs on tight when you reach out to steady him, half-collapsed and moaning like he’s seasick.

“p...paps…” he chokes out, then tries again with a little more oomph. Papyrus had already started running at the first one, seeming to take three steps to cover about 30 feet. He asks Sans something in the language they speak as he reaches out to touch his brother’s skull with impossibly long, bare phalanges; Sans starts to answer, but

 

reality

 

unravels

 

 


	76. e p i l o g u e

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Strapping Young Lad – Love?  
> https://youtu.be/LeG-6bpeUkA

 

and

 

you’re in a massive, dimly lit cavern, bluish light seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, although you can see a slight shadow beneath you all on the chilly stone floor. It seems patchy, covered in...lichen?

The skeleton brothers are staring at a house.

You blink rapidly and realize it’s _their_ old house in Snowdin, which Sans had eventually gotten around to showing you. It had put him in a weird mood, the same weird mood going back to any place he’d spent a great deal of time at underground puts him in. It had been dark and empty inside, but he’d showed you his bedroom, which was the same bedroom at his house now. This had been their home for longer than you like to think about too hard, and they still keep some important stuff here. Underground is still the safest place for a lot of things monsters really don’t want humans to get their hands on.

Like what’s in the basement of this house, for example. The outside looks just like it did when you saw it before, and the cold air has a dampness that tastes like the memory of snow.

Except now all the lights are on, spilling out golden from windows on both stories; the little multicolored string lights around the eaves are all lit up, too.

But.

There are already two skeletons already standing in front of it.

A tall one, and a short one.

The way they stand is chillingly familiar, and so very, very _wrong_.

What the tall one’s wearing looks like leather, but it doesn’t creak. The short one’s puffy jacket doesn’t rasp when he flickers forward like a distorted shadow. Silver glints faintly at throats and waists, ankles and wrists, but their approach is both unnerving and silent.

 

They both have visible eye points like Sans, but… but.

They’re bloody pinpricks in the void, red and threatening even with both of them silhouetted from behind by the golden light from the window. You can make them out, but not distinctly.

“what the _fuck_ ,” Sans grunts, hunching in on himself like someone punched him in the gut he doesn’t actually have.

“NO,” Papyrus says in a tone that would be flat if it wasn’t shaking. “… _NO_.” You’ve never heard his voice shake like that, not even…

“NO,” he says again, decisively this time. When his hand moves, a fence of bones three rows deep appears between the brothers and the unfamiliar ( ~~eerily familiar~~ ) monsters.

“AND NOW YOU SEE HOW _EASY_ IT IS,” the tall skeleton intones dryly from across it; you all flinch because his voice...his _voice_.

It’s the screech-scrape of steel lodged in bone.

He seems about to take a step forward, one leather-gloved hand gripping the opposite wrist, when the short one suddenly flickers out in front of him. The tall one stops as if frozen, expression and pose unchanging. Like someone hit the fucking pause button or something.

“…thirteen years…three months, fifteen days, twelve hours, ten minutes, twenty-seven seconds. had to’ve been in the ballpark, right?”

The short skeleton grins. Even in the dim light, you can see familiar landmarks.

The intonation is the same, too.

“otherwise wouldn’t be nothin’ here right now, huh? guess it worked.”

“...no,” Sans breathes beside you. “no, no…”

“seems like there’s a pretty bad case a that goin’ around,” the same deep voice remarks viciously. “i hate ta self deprecate, but, uh…i’m seeing a whole lotta empirical evidence that it _did_.” His sockets get long, but they’re not lazy. The points inside them seem to glow like coals. You can’t quite tell what because he’s backlit by the window’s golden light, but...there’s something askew about the shape of his face.

“you got the golden ending _right here_ , bucko.” He takes another step forward, tilts his skull just like Sans does when he’s pretending to like someone. “you tryin’ to say you don’t plan to _share_?”

“Who the fuck _are_ you?” you hear your own voice call out tight and strange. It doesn’t sound like you at all.

The short skeleton takes a few more broad, shuffling steps forward, the tall one keeping catlike pace slightly to the left and behind him like a bodyguard. They both get less backlit, emerging further into the cooly dim ambience of Snowdin. Now you can see what’s going on with his face.

The left bottom quadrant is smashed and sunken in, deep ridges starting at the chin and continuing right through the shattered, distorted grin. The edges of his sharklike teeth are fused together haphazardly, asymmetrical lines of darkness where they meet like stained glass panels sealed together with lead.

All the sharp shards are still an iridescent, living-bone white except one glinting triangle of worn yellow metal, slightly off center toward the left. It clashes with a big buckle made of silver bones that fastens the leather collar right underneath his smashed jaw, another bone depending from the center with a ring of some sort just...dangling there on his chest. The lights in his eyes are an arterial red, brighter than the almost purplish magic that seethes across his skull. It settles across his face and into his features, makes the grooves beneath his sockets look like wounds. He watches you take in his scars with a derisive scoff, lifting his chin defiantly.

The tall skeleton glares daggers at you, the points in his sockets a darker, cooler red than the rusty iridescence creeping across his broad cheekbones. Black, leather-like straps studded with more silver keep his clothing close to his body, outlining it in ways that make it clear nothing human is inside them.

He maintains his position relative to his companion as they near Papyrus’s fence of bone constructs… just like the row of silver bones that closes his ragged cape, the color of blood and ashes. Just like the bones that form his oversize belt buckle, identical to the one on the other’s collar. They stand there at the fence side by side, both of them grinning now.

Your mind tries to reject it yet again, but you can’t ignore it anymore. Although his teeth come to neat points that fit together perfectly, and a raised white line pulls at his left socket, top and bottom…

You’re looking at an exact duplicate of Papyrus’s face.

Your eyes drop to the shorter skeleton’s malicious expression as your mouth falls open; he doesn’t have as much flexibility in his mouth with the… the injury, but…

He grins like an anglerfish, a battered bone hand emerging to extend itself flagrantly out over the rows of constructs. He doesn’t even bother hiding the glint of something sharp and dangerous held between his metacarpals, jutting out from his palm to slash the bluish half-light with its malevolent intent.

“the name’s _sans_ ,” he practically giggles, the jarringly familiar voice emerging deep and throatless from somewhere inside that battered skull. “sans the skeleton.”

The points in his sockets flare out like sunspots; his words carve themselves like wounds in your reality even as he goes utterly motionless.

 

“don’t you know how to greet a new pal?”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah. There’s going to be a sequel. It will be shorter, action-y-er, and have a significantly different tone.
> 
> This has been the story of relationships built to withstand a multiverse slowly imploding under the weight of its own injustice. What happens next may not warm your heart, but it just might heal a wound that’s been bleeding for far too long.
> 
> These are the Fell counterparts of this version of Sans and Papyrus, since not even I am enough of an asshole to make them face what’s coming alone.
> 
> Too many things that should be dead...aren’t.


End file.
